American artist Tschabalala Self was keen to bring a modern, urban ‘everywoman’ to tower over the crowds at Trafalgar Square. Her commission for London’s Fourth Plinth, Lady in Blue, is a joyful and proud young woman cast in bronze, the blue of her dress and jewellery inspired by the vibrant tone of lapis lazuli.

Self, who works across mediums including painting, sewing, collage, quiltmaking and printing, imbues her figurative works with a vibrant energy. It is a vitality she translates into her Fourth Plinth commission, the 16th since the programme began, creating work she hopes will be relatable.

‘She is not an idol to venerate or a historic figure to commemorate,’ Self says. ‘She is an everyday person much like the many who occupy the square daily. She is striding forward into our collective future with ambition, purpose and optimism.’

New York born and based Self, who was announced as the winning commission in March 2024 by the Fourth Plinth Commissioning Group, chaired by Wallpaper* contributing editor Ekow Eshun, has always been inspired by London, she adds. ‘London is to thank for many milestones in my life. My first institutional show was held here in London, along with my first major gallery exhibition. I have come to know London as a truly global metropolis, and Lady in Blue reflects the sophistication of this city.’

Lady in Blue brings a significance to the everyday, adds Eshun. ‘Tschabalala Self takes the familiar figure of a woman moving through the city and gives her an extraordinary presence at the heart of London. This powerful sculpture will invite conversation about contemporary art, giving audiences a chance to engage with the work of a remarkable and inspirational artist.’

Lady in Blue will be a highlight of London Sculpture Week (19-27 September 2026)

For most people, a retrospective of their life’s work is the ultimate occasion to celebrate themselves, but for Charlotte Mensah, her new exhibition, ‘Charlotte Mensah: Community Matters’, is, as its title suggests, as much about the people who helped her become a pioneering force in Afro, mixed, and curly hair culture as it is about how she got there.

Open in London’s Ladbroke Hall 8-13 September 2026, ‘Community Matters’ is a mixed-media exhibition that traces Mensah’s life and career, from her childhood in Ghana to the opening of her famous salon, Hairlounge, on Portobello Road, and her position as one of Britain’s most influential hairstylists. In doing so, it showcases the people who inspired Mensah along the way and highlights the larger conversations around culture, creativity, and belonging that have always informed Mensah’s practice.

According to Mensah, the ambition was never simply to take things from the salon and put them into Ladbroke Hall. ‘We wanted to translate something of the feeling of the salon into an exhibition context: the intimacy, the conversation, the photography, the objects and, most importantly, the people,’ she says. ‘To do that, we had to look at my whole life and understand how it had informed my practice.’

Working with friends and Hairlounge customers, senior curator at V&A East Madeleine Haddon, and interior designer Jacqueline Douglas, Mensah filled the space with images and artifacts, creating an immersive space that will also, for the duration it is open, play host to talks and workshops like ‘Beauty, Business & Belonging’ and ‘The Modern-Day Salon: A Cultural Institution.’

Seeing her life presented before her in this way was an illuminating experience for Mensah. ‘It confirmed something I have always felt: none of this happened overnight, and none of it happened alone. My practice has always been social and relational. The work is hair, but around the hair there has always been family, friendship, conversation and collaboration.’

That was especially true when it came to Mensah’s family: ‘What surprised me was how present my children were at so many important points in the story,’ she says. ‘My son’s bedroom became my first salon in the mid-1990s. Then, while we were going through the archive, I found a photograph of my daughter in 2002 hiding inside the counter that was being made for the salon. That same counter is still there on Portobello Road today. The salon itself was designed by my neighbour, the architect Robert Grace. So even when I look at the physical space, I can see relationships embedded within it.’

Importantly, the exhibition also highlights Mensah’s trailblazing role in the history of afro and textured hair, and how that history has changed over the past 40 years. Mensah says he has seen the visibility of Afro hair change ‘enormously’ but, ‘visibility is only one part of progress’.

‘The conversation I want us to have much more seriously now is about education. There is an art to hairstyling, of course, but underneath the artistry, there has to be knowledge. You have to understand the fundamentals before you can improvise. You crawl, then you walk, then eventually you can run.

‘That is why I believe we need clearer standards and qualifications that properly demonstrate a stylist’s skill set, and that should apply across hairdressing. It is also why education has become such an important part of my own practice.’ To that end, Mensah runs Curl Workshops for families and delivers professional masterclasses for salons because, as she says, ‘ultimately, my idea of inclusion is very simple: somebody with Afro, curly or textured hair should be able to walk into a salon anywhere in this country and know that their hair can be cared for properly.’

'Charlotte Mensah: Community Matters' is on view at Ladbroke Hall until 13 September 2026

Set within a wooded plot beside Wimbledon Common stands 22 Parkside, a landmark of British modernism, recognisable for its glass-and-steel exterior. The home, also known as the Rogers House or Wimbledon House, is a pioneering home designed by Richard Rogers. Built between 1968 and 1970 for his parents, Nino and Dada Rogers, and inspired in part by his upbringing in Italy, the house is considered one of his most personal and influential works.

Enter 22 Parkside, aka the Rogers House, in Wimbledon Common

An example of Hi-Tech architecture and functionalist design, 22 Parkside was built using a prefabricated construction system, reflecting Rogers’ interest in flexible living. Arranged around a central courtyard, two separate single-storey pavilions are flooded with natural light. The house became a testing ground for ideas that would later find expression in some of Rogers’ most celebrated international projects, including the Lloyd’s Building in London and the Centre Pompidou in Paris.

Renzo Piano, who designed the latter with Rogers, said: 'There is no doubt that 22 Parkside was one of the most important buildings that Richard created. It worked as a miniature prototype for the sort of approach we took in the Centre Pompidou.'

With the aim of protecting one of the UK’s most important examples of modern architecture for future generations, the house has been donated to the National Trust by the Rogers family through the Richard Rogers Charitable Settlement. Ben Rogers, the son of Richard and Su Rogers, said, 'As a family, we wanted to ensure that this remarkable house would be protected, cared for and shared with future generations, rather than remaining a private asset.'

This acquisition joins the National Trust’s growing collection of 20th-century heritage, which includes 2 Willow Road in Hampstead and The Homewood in Surrey. The charity will curate a programme of guided visits, partnerships and digital content, opening the house to students, researchers and visitors.

The house’s new role as an educational resource reflects a belief that was close to Rogers’ heart, as his wife, Ruthie, explains: 'Richard regarded public access to culture – whether architecture, art, theatre, music, or design – as one of the great aspirations in life. It filled him with such joy that the public would have access to this house that was once private, a house that was a prototype for what he thought houses could be for all.'

22 Parkside will open to the public on Saturday 12 September as part of Open House London. A week later, visitors will also have the chance to step inside Rogers’ Lloyd’s Building, which this year marks its 40th anniversary.

The National Trust notes that public access to 22 Parkside will be introduced in stages while it cares for the building and develops its future programme. nationaltrust.org.uk

‘I'm absolutely mad about rules,’ says artist Amelia Cross, sitting at her studiously arranged desk at Sarabande, the foundation set up by designer Lee Alexander McQueen to support a new generation of creatives. Meticulously realised miniature drawn studies of items of clothing or clothing-related details, such as shirt cuffs, reside alongside a pair of feet shaped canvases encased in white lace socks. Cross has been preparing her first UK solo show ‘Rules of Disappearance’ which opens 10 September 2026 at Angelica Jopling’s Incubator – a gallery championing emerging contemporary art voices – and will showcase a new series of her wonderful ‘sewn paintings’.

Prefect, a new work, is laid neatly on the studio floor. It looks like a school uniform that its wearer has literally just stepped out of. Composed of a perfectly pleated skirt that sits just so, the emerald velvet ribbon trim of its jacket exquisitely stitched, while the matching tonally coloured button is, as you lean in, in fact not a real button at all, but a tiny and perfectly painted rendition of one. As buttons go, it’s beguiling. Prefect is a great introduction to Cross; the prefect badge that sits on the jacket’s lapel is also painted and actually reads ‘perfect’. This kind of knowing use of words and trompe-l’œil effects is central to the way Cross wants to invite the viewer to engage and interact with her painstaking, thoughtful work – most pieces, depending on their size, take around five weeks. ‘I like the idea of the double take or second look,’ she says. ‘My work is quite multiangular too, so you do have to move around them.’

Other pieces in the show include a series of 32 small panels featuring a variety of buttons – 31 of which will be painted and one of which will be real; Cross liked spot-the-difference books as a child. One of the largest works, Marketing Graduate, is a painter’s shirt rendered as a biting dig at the idea of what a young artist might have to endure in the ever-volatile and competitive art market; the interior of the collar reads ‘Tailored for Blue Chips’, while its four front pockets are festooned with the typical artistic tools, from oil sticks to scissors. ‘It’s called the Marketing Graduate because that really is what a lot of emerging artists are,’ says Cross in a refreshingly matter-of-fact way. ‘It’s very anti-art.’

Inspired by McQueen learning the craft of tailoring on Saville Row, Cross initially studied bespoke tailoring at London College of Fashion – her degree show featured four looks that riffed on Lucian Freud paintings – before completing a master’s in painting from the Royal College of Art in 2025.

Her initial experiments in oil revolved around paintings of clothing, but with the figure all but removed, leaving perhaps a singular hand amid two beautifully executed shirts. Cross says her creative breakthrough came with the work Neck (Study) in 2024; having observed her own trench coat draped over a chair, she felt inspired to make its collar, followed by painting its buttons and a subtle shadow that you can barely see in a reproduction photograph.

‘I had to almost reject fashion,’ she says. ‘And then get into painting to return to it. My sewing machine and paints had been next to each other for years, but it had never clicked until the RCA.’

Cross tells a wonderfully rudimentary and DIY story of an early art-fashion cross-over; at around 16, inspired by a Miu Miu collection, she drew cats on a school shirt collar. ‘I would use up all the data on my phone to look at runway shows,’ she laughs. But her interest in clothes began with her mother, who she says has always been very well dressed – ‘She always taught us, if you have a good handbag and a good pair of shoes, you can walk into any room, and you'll be fine’ – while her father’s career as a pilot instigated her lifelong curiosity around uniforms.

Comparisons to Domenico Gnoli are obvious – Cross describes the way he painted the twill diagonal line of a tie with a slight shadow as ‘just delicious’. She notes, too, that conceptual artists such as Yoko Ono, Lawrence Weiner and Marcel Duchamp feel pertinent inspirations. ‘Mary Kelly, I think, is really interesting,’ she says. ‘She did a lot with fashion, in almost using clothing as a documentation of a life, and creating an archive. I think, in a way, maybe that's also what I'm trying to do: create a form of an archive.’ Agnes Martin’s rigour and simplicity similarly chime with Cross’ sensibility. ‘You can see it has taken her years to get that perfect stripe, and I think I'm also chasing that perfect button or stripe.’

Painting mostly from life, Cross’ signature greyish beige Belgian linen offers her a certain restraint – ‘It allows the shadows or the form to do the talking.’ Her process begins with a sketch. She will then pattern-cut as if she is making clothing, deciding crucial measurements before cutting the linen, figuring out dimensions for the stretcher bars and which bits of the linen will need to be primed in order to be painted upon. This is followed by the cutting of each individual piece; she will then begin to paint and sew.

Born in London, Cross grew up in Portugal, returning to the UK to study for her GCSEs. She recognises that the shift in school uniform from a very simple polo shirt to the traditional state-school grey skirt with a blazer and tie cemented her fascination with the language and codes of clothing. ‘You’re judged immediately on how exactly you wear your uniform – there’s such an unspoken language around it,’ she recalls of school-era styling nuances. ‘I do like that tension between the idea that a uniform is a way to equalise but somehow also offers a way in to breaking the rules.’ On a first date, she says her initial question is always ‘What was your school uniform and how did you wear it?’

For a recent show at Nino Mier Gallery in New York, Cross completed extensive archival research into uniforms, specifically school dress codes and workplace attire at both the V&A and the Goldsmith’s Textile Collection. On a board in her studio, there are images of men wearing plus fours from the 1920s, including Cambridge undergraduates. Inspiration is also gathered from real life, specifically on her Northern Line commute. ‘I like to look back, but also look at what people are wearing now because that makes for a new language.’ One of her favourites among this latest work is Sardines, featuring four almost identical navy suit-jacketed arms, which was largely informed by journeying bankers and the varying iterations on a classic navy sartorial uniform.

For those who invest in Cross’ work, they may find a secondary element in addition to the painting itself in the form of some kind of correspondence from the artist. Secret messages, confessional ideas and writings circulate her practice – perhaps another way to keep the audience alert, engaged, looking. For her New York show, Cross made a work called The Price of Privacy, consisting of a small pocket detail and a partly concealed confessional letter detailing the artist’s own sins of the past year. After it sold, she sent the full letter to the buyer – as yet with no response. ‘But that’s part of it,’ she grins. ‘In my mind, I thought they could post it online or maybe just keep it for themselves… I like that these added elements aren’t obvious straight away,’ she says. ‘My work allows me to play, but also to mess with people a little bit.’

Amelia Cross, ‘Rules For Disappearance’, 10 September – 4 October 2026 at Incubator, London, incubatorart.com

In March, British furniture brand SCP announced plans to relocate from the Shoreditch showroom it had occupied for four decades – an unexpected, though perhaps inevitable, development. The previous month, Wallpaper* met founder Sheridan Coakley to hear about the impending move to a townhouse showroom in Clerkenwell – a significant shift not only for the company but for London’s design scene.

When SCP opened in a former upholstery warehouse in Shoreditch in 1985, Coakley chose the location because it was affordable and close to the manufacturers he worked with. As a retail destination, however, it was an industrial backwater. He recalls customers arriving by taxi and asking the driver to keep the meter running. Over the following four decades, the neighbourhood and its design community grew around SCP. New designers were discovered, countless pieces of furniture launched and many a party held.

Coakley himself has remained a pivotal yet famously self-effacing figure in the industry. He began his career as an antiques dealer in Notting Hill before making his name as the man who brought Philippe Starck’s furniture to the UK. He subsequently helped launch the careers of designers including Jasper Morrison, Matthew Hilton and Konstantin Grcic. SCP feels as much like a family as a business, but its ethos is also underpinned by a longstanding commitment to British manufacturing. Its vertically integrated model includes a Norfolk upholstery factory, opened in 2003, which now specialises in sustainable materials and production methods.

Coakley has never shied away from bold decisions, and the Shoreditch building – which combined the company’s offices, showroom and shop – was, he says, 'from a retail point of view', simply no longer working out.

'It’s changed,' he says of bricks-and-mortar retail. 'From a trade point of view, Clerkenwell is a much better place to be located.'

Here on Clerkenwell Green – among the area's many other furniture showrooms – the five-storey townhouse will benefit from the existing trade footfall while continuing to welcome those who want to browse and buy in person, something that Coakley notes is otherwise lacking in the area.

'Our retail and contract businesses are much more aligned now than they used to be,' he explains. Offices and hospitality interiors increasingly have a softer, more residential character, and SCP’s new showroom has deliberately been designed to feel more like a home than a conventional contract space – an approach also embraced by Danish brand Gubi at its nearby Charterhouse Square outpost.

Although its facade resembles a Victorian terrace, Coakley tells us the building was actually constructed in the 1980s. It also comes with a useful annexe, which SCP are using as an events and office space. The interior design is by Simone McEwan and Sacha Leong of Nice Projects – the studio behind 40 Duke, Selfridges' private shopping destination, which opened earlier this year.

At the shop's smart tobacco-brown entrance, a large window draws passers-by inside, where they will find accessories and gifts displayed in a space finished with finger-block parquet flooring. The basement hosts a lighting department designed by long-time SCP collaborator Jon Harrison while the other three floors are dedicated to furniture, arranged in distinct room sets divided by shelving and curtains. The top floor, known as the Apartment, is staged as a private residence rather than a conventional showroom.

The result is decidedly more polished than the previous store, with carefully considered materials and finishes, warm colours, soft lighting and an intentionally residential feel. 'I hope it's not too fashionable,' Coakley laughs. 'We haven't gone for a completely minimalist look.'

The annexe, which was formerly a metalworking workshop, sits in a courtyard at the rear of the building. Its ground floor serves as a meeting space with a materials and samples library, while a kitchen by Very Simple Kitchen – an Italian brand which SCP is launching in the UK during London Design Festival 2026 – is separated by a glass wall. SCP's offices are located upstairs on the first and second floors.

For this month's opening, which happily coincides with London Design Festival, the store is hosting a showcase of vases designed by Martino Gamper for Italian manufacturer Bitossi Ceramiche, alongside furniture by Swedish brand Källemo and lighting by Blue Green Works. Outdoor furniture by London-based woven-textile brand Shore Studios will be displayed in the courtyard.

Ever the pragmatist, Coakley is cautiously optimistic about the move. 'I feel less emotional about it than I did to begin with,' he admits. 'I was very resistant in my head initially because I thought [the move] would be looked upon as a negative thing. But actually, as a project, I'm very excited about it – this is the part I like.'

SCP, 16 Clerkenwell Green, London, EC1R 0QT

London diners have become used to the idea of a sushi-based omakase menu; now this Fitzrovia import – the first European outpost of Ushio Haruyoshi Bettei in Fukuoka on the island of Kyushu – is introducing the capital to multi-course menus of wagyu beef. Put aside any preconceptions of fatty meat, however: the dinner-only restaurant specialises in akami (lean) wagyu rather than heavy marbling. Almost all the meat has been imported from Japan, along with the chefs who grill it and the ceramics it’s served on – not great for air miles, perhaps, but a guarantee of the niche authenticity the restaurant offers.

Wallpaper* dines at Wagyu Yakiniku Ushio, London

The mood: Counter-top cool

The restaurant’s interiors have been modelled on the Fukuoka original, with the best seats arranged around the L-shaped counter behind which the chefs sear and serve, though unless you speak Japanese, don’t expect much in the way of cheffy chat. Not that beef-based banter is the point, says chef-owner Hakusei Chin. ‘At Ushio, we’ve always believed that the quality of the ingredients and the skill of the chef should speak for themselves, so we wanted the space to feel equally calm and focused.’

He’s certainly managed that. All the staff – from the chefs to the saké-pouring sommeliers – are charm itself, while ceramics sourced from Kyushu display the same individual character. A backlit shelf behind the counter carries ceramics from Arita, the Kyushu town where Japan’s first porcelain was fired four centuries ago. Some of it is Ko-Imari, the heavily decorated porcelain that Europe bought by the shipload from the 1600s; some from Lin, a modern range glazed to a metallic finish. Vases holding seasonal flowers come courtesy of ceramicist Taeko Kajihara, who builds her pieces by hand instead of throwing them on a wheel.

‘Rather than expressing Japan through decoration,’ Chin says, ‘we chose to work with natural materials like wood, stone and plaster, and to keep the space as minimal as possible. In doing so, the counter and the act of cooking naturally become the centre of the experience.’ That minimalism extends to the lack of any obvious signage on the exterior, but rest assured that once inside, the experience doesn’t feel in the slightest bit unwelcoming.

The food: Lean cuisine

Each course of beef, whether from an omakase of A5 wagyu, a six-piece tasting selection or the à la carte, arrives with a card with the relevant cut stamped on an illustration of a cow. First comes top blade served sashimi-style, the pink meat lightly scored and faintly marbled; it looks almost like a slice of fatty tuna garnished with a shiso leaf but tastes powerfully and lingeringly of beefy umami.

The rest of the cuts come cooked, treated to the briefest of sears on the grills (‘yakiniku’ means ‘grilled meat’ in Japanese) before being flipped over and plated up. One arrangement features a trio of tongue, tenderloin and kurimi (lean shoulder), simply seasoned with salt; another plate brings top blade lightly glazed with tare. The richest-tasting of all is sirloin seared with sukiyaki marinade and presented with an egg yolk and a dome of steamed rice.

This lighter style of beef, the restaurant claims, is higher in protein and lower in fat than traditional wagyu, with the result common to many omakase meals that you may still be hungry at the end. If you’re feeling peckish, ask for an extra course of Fukuoka-style wagyu curry of slow-cooked beef tendon, its gravy-like sauce scooped up with a wooden spoon – it’s as comfortingly unsophisticated as the rest of the meal has been elegantly refined.

Wagyu Yakiniku Ushio is located at 12 Charlotte Street, London, W1T 2LU, UK.

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Zaha Hadid's sudden death at the age of 65, in 2016, was a cruel blow. Having fought so hard for her ideas, she was at the height of her career and had so much more to do. It was an incalculable loss in a world that desperately needs her sense of ambition and visionary thinking. An extraordinary architect and individual, Hadid's personality and professional output are hard to disentangle, and nowhere is this more evident than in her vast archive of drawings, models, furniture, clothing and design tools.

Step inside the Zaha Hadid Foundation and its archive

Her former tutor at the Architectural Association (AA), Rem Koolhaas, famously described her as ‘a planet in her own orbit.' The phrase aptly captures the enormity of her talent and the vivid image of a person who was constantly questioning and creating, in a class of her own. With characteristic foresight, in 2013, Hadid set up the Zaha Hadid Foundation (ZHF) with three main objectives: to support the education of young people in architecture, design and related disciplines; to take care of her archive and collections and produce exhibitions; and to establish or support a permanent museum or gallery. A few months after setting up the ZHF, she bought the site of the former Design Museum at Shad Thames, next to Tower Bridge in London, for approximately £10m. Sadly, she did not live to complete her vision for a museum there, but her team at Zaha Hadid Architects moved the archives and collections to the site in the summer of 2018 to continue the archiving process.

Hadid often seemed to live in a future world, imagining a form of architecture that was well beyond our experience. Indeed, for the first decade of her career, she struggled to find a client who would commit to her bold vision. At the same time, she was a magpie with an avid interest in the world around her. She was fascinated by culture, other architects' work, and the related disciplines of fashion, design and art. She was a keen collector and shopper, who would acquire work by a fashion graduate she had spotted at their catwalk show; or buy the same shoes or garments in several colourways.

For many architects, legacy is about the buildings they leave behind rather than the rolls of drawings and models that gather dust (or the servers full of CAD files, a struggle for museums due to constant software updates). Conventionally, an architect's output becomes part of the built fabric of society, whereas in the case of Hadid, legacy is a broader and more complex subject. There is no doubt that she changed the course of architectural practice. But in the UK – the country she chose to make her home, having grown up in Iraq – her vision was not widely accepted. Despite the advances in design thinking and construction that she led, British architecture largely consists of what her long-term friend and current ZHF trustee, Archigram co-founder Peter Cook, describes as vernacular-inspired, ‘biscuit-coloured' buildings.

During her life, Hadid completed around 35 buildings, alongside pavilions, installations, and design, furniture and fashion projects. Built work includes the Vitra Fire Station (1991) in Weil am Rhein, Phaeno Science Center (2005) in Wolfsburg (both in Germany), MAXXI Museum of XXI Century Arts in Rome (2009) and the London Aquatics Centre (2012). More than 35 projects were in progress at the time of her death, including the Port Authority Building in Antwerp and the Mathematics Gallery at London's Science Museum.

Her ideas, particularly research into parametricism, virtual worlds, product design and new materials, continue to be developed by the architectural practice that now operates as ZHA. In June this year, the practice replaced her name following a court case, in which ZHA won the right to terminate the 2014 agreement that committed the company to paying six per cent of its revenue to the ZHF to continue using her name. The ruling and title change mark a new era in the practice's development. The renaming has caused controversy among many of Hadid's loyal followers, but as ZHA principal, Patrik Schumacher, says, ‘Of course, we love Zaha, and we've been working with her, the leadership and myself, for many decades, on these projects, but she's no longer with us – in spirit only – and we have a lot of new projects coming out.'

The court ruling, which came a decade after Hadid's death, also marks a new era for the ZHF under the leadership of architecture and design curator Aric Chen. Since the summer of 2025, Chen has brought a fresh wave of energy, initiating a new brand identity and website by Amsterdam-based design collective Experimental Jetset, as well as a light renovation by Studio KA of the practice's former studio, on Bowling Green Lane in Clerkenwell, which will become a public architecture centre complete with residency space and room for temporary shows and other programmes. Alongside this, the team is accelerating its work to catalogue and display Hadid's collections and archive, most of which are stored at Shad Thames.

Plans are also coming together for a major retrospective exhibition, aiming to tour Europe, Asia, the Middle East and the US. One of Chen's first moves, just a few months into the job, was to organise regular ‘Guess Who's in Town' evening events, where a mystery architect visiting London is invited to speak to an audience about their work. The sense of fun, informal debate and international glamour of these events seems an appropriate way to honour Hadid's fast-paced life, strong views and global network. Chen acknowledges that the ZHF's two properties need a lot of work, and that it will take time to plan for the future. In the meantime, his aim is for the Clerkenwell studio to provide galleries and education spaces for architectural culture, welcoming the public five days a week.

Chen has been busy creating alliances that reflect the life and work of Hadid. This autumn, to mark the relaunch of the ZHF, the team is planning a two-day, multi-venue symposium. Taking place 30-31 October (the latter being Hadid's birthday), the event will be a collaboration between the ZHF, the AA and the Serpentine, which built one of her first completed buildings, a temporary pavilion in the summer of 2000 (it was also the Serpentine's inaugural pavilion). Chen describes the planned sessions as ranging from ‘scholarship to gossip', looking at influences from the architect's early years in Baghdad and Beirut, through to her student days at the AA, her furniture and product designs, and the broader networks of clients, media and institutions in which she operated.

Over at Shad Thames, the archive is a longer-term project. The building is more than 40 years old and requires repairs. Some are ongoing. When we visit, a bucket positioned below a newly replaced rooflight catches rainwater drips - teething issues with one of the fixes to be done to ensure Hadid's collection, arguably one of the largest and most diverse archives ever created by an architect, has a safe home. The team says it is undertaking further improvements in order to maintain the progress of its inventory.

In Zaha Hadid: Complete Works, published by Thames & Hudson in 2004, US architect Greg Lynn, who taught alongside Hadid at Yale School of Architecture, wrote she ‘has always been at the epicentre of innovation of architectural communication, as well as having one of the strongest creative visions in our field... She combines painting, projective geometry, perspective, model building, computer renderings and smooth curvaceous geometric surfaces into the masses, interiors and structure of her buildings.'

The 2004 publication was a remarkable object in its own right – its red Perspex box contained four hardback volumes, of varying shapes and sizes, which seemed to explode from its sides. Lynn compared Hadid to the Italian Renaissance architect and stage designer Vincenzo Scamozzi and to Inigo Jones, the 17th-century architect, who also designed elaborate stage sets and costumes.

In the early years, Hadid's focus on ‘paper architecture' reinforced her drive to work in different formats, including set design. This work will be the subject of an exhibition at the ZHF in the newly renovated gallery in October. Curated jointly by Libby Sellers and ZHF's Catherine Howe, it will consider how Hadid's architectural language extended into immersive environments for contemporary dance, classical opera and pop music, and will include the Music Video Pavilion in Groningen, Netherlands (1990), which was commissioned for an urban festival promoting the fast-growing music video phenomenon, as well as a set for the Pet Shop Boys' Nightlife world tour (1999-2000).

Hadid's remarkable archive will be the subject of research, speculation and debate for years to come. Chen aims to make the material as accessible to students and scholars as possible, but he also faces a challenge. The ZHF consists of a team of 16, eight of whom are collections and research staff working their way through thousands of items, many of which have not been catalogued. Rolls of drawings are stacked up in tubes, with no detailed inventories. Part of the problem is that, although the entire archive covering the period up to 2016, including paintings, models and Hadid's fashion collection, was transferred from the practice to the ZHF in 2019, the digital transfer of the data, including provenance for objects in the collection, has been complicated.

Because of incompatibility between digital platforms, the ZHF collections and research teams are having to painstakingly retrieve information and add it to a new database. At the time of Hadid's death, the studio had inventorised and assigned unique archive collection numbers to roughly 17,000 objects. Given the scale of the archive and the resources available, many items had not been processed. Since then, the ZHF team has continued the documentation and cataloguing programme, resulting in a rough estimate of approximately 300,000 objects in the collection as a whole.

For Hadid, the collecting and archival process was of fundamental importance, and its origins reflect her holistic design vision. On a personal level, the collection includes her clothes (both those she collected for their design value and those she wore), shoes, handbags and furniture, together with her own designs for shoes, bags and jewellery. There are also folders of receipts from her clothing purchases, carefully put to one side. In her library, architecture books – many of them gifts from friends – sit alongside exhibition and building product catalogues, and copies of her favourite DVDs, including American Gigolo, which she reportedly used to watch on repeat.

Why did she keep all this stuff ? ‘I read into it a kind of sweet sentimentality,' says Chen. ‘She felt deeply about things, and people were important to her.' Many of the objects give an insight into Hadid's personality, and in particular, her playful side. For example, she is pictured on the cover of a publication accompanying her 1989 solo show at Arc en Rêve in Bordeaux, wearing an asymmetrical jacket that she had hand-painted, featuring a single ‘googly eye' tucked into one of its lower corners.

ZHA's head of exhibitions and archive Manon Janssens worked alongside Hadid for more than 20 years and formed a unique insight into her magpie-like ways. ‘The archive was at the centre of her practice. It was never considered a dead repository; it was very much alive and constantly consulted, revisited and used,' she notes. ‘Every detail was important to her, from the clothes she wore to how she lived at home and the office. She never threw anything away. The archive preserves not only the final outcomes but also the evidence of Zaha's creative thinking and development.'

Janssens joined the practice in 2003 as press officer. Hadid was much in demand as a speaker, and the pair often travelled around the world together, with Janssens preparing slides for lectures, responding to press requests and organising press conferences, such as for the Pritzker Prize ceremony at the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg in 2004. At that stage, the archive was recorded on a series of Excel spreadsheets, with items listed mainly if they had been part of exhibitions. There was no full catalogue, but Janssens recalls ‘colourful polaroids glued to boxes to show what was inside'. She says, ‘Zaha would frequently challenge me to locate models or documents at short notice, reinforcing the need for a database that was capable of tracking all things in the archive and its continual growth.'

Janssens left in 2005 for a stint at David Chipperfield Architects, but returned in 2008 to work on the practice's exhibitions, together with Zaha Hadid Design director Woody Yao, and to set up detailed catalogues of its physical and digital assets. These operated as a research tool, while also supporting the regular requests for loans and exhibitions that came from all over the world. Having visited archives at the Tate, Royal Academy, V&A and various global practices, the decision was made to build a bespoke cataloguing system that could deal with specific Hadid requests – for example, automating printing of well-designed product booklets, linking the personal archive to an iPad app, or printing shipping labels.

The bespoke catalogue is still in operation as the brain of the renamed ZHA, but the pre-2016 objects have been physically handed over to the ZHF. While it is understandable that the ZHF chose to adopt a system designed for museum collections (TMS), the bespoke digital platform itself is arguably a Hadid-designed ‘object'. Her dedication to producing such a sophisticated tool reflects the importance of exhibitions to Hadid and the meticulous way she approached them. The system was beautifully designed with graphic icons to symbolise categories of items, and even recorded the clothing Hadid had worn to particular exhibition openings. From 1981 to date, the practice participated in and organised 250 exhibitions, ranging from installations in art galleries and private residences to loans and displays at major retrospective exhibitions, such as those that took place at the Guggenheim in New York (2006), the Design Museum in London (2007), the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg (2015), the Palazzo Franchetti in Venice (2016) or, most recently, at the Museum of Contemporary Art and Urban Planning in Shenzhen (2026).

Hadid's creation of the ZHF and her dedication to collecting were part of her commitment to making a better world, and that vision was inseparable from design innovation. The founding document of the charity specifically states that it should ‘advance the public knowledge of modern architecture…and the parametric style.' Today, in the UK at least, parametricism – a style that was synonymous with Hadid – seems out of step with a culture that is more interested in small-scale, artisanal approaches to making buildings. So it seems fair to ask, how will the ZHF be true to Hadid, as well as being, as Chen puts it, ‘relevant to our time'?

Chen believes the notion that Hadid was futuristic is reductive: ‘It relies on a singular notion of what the future looks like,' he says. ‘Zaha was immersed in the present – she didn't think she was futuristic. She was about invention and imagination, re-envisioning spatiality and the ways we live and operate in the here and now.' He chuckles, recalling the famous quote of French philosopher Paul Valéry, ‘The trouble with our times is that the future isn't what it used to be'.

zhfoundation.com

Wallpaper’s 30th-anniversary, October 2026 Guest Editors’ Issue – with guest-edited sections by Es Devlin, Carrie Mae Weems and Palace Skateboards – is available from 3 September, in print on newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

The latest hot ticket to arrive in London is not yet another velvety underground watering hole in the city's centre, but a chic midcentury-style salon for a creative posse. Bar Blondie sits amid the buzz of Queen’s Park’s Lonsdale Road, which has recently seen an influx of mews buildings turned into atmospheric restaurants, including Pyrá and Don’t Tell Dad.

The opening is driven not so much by the rock’n’roll associations of its name as by country-and-western influences and the artistic inclinations of award-winning sommelier Alexandra Price (most recently head of wine at Michelin-starred Plates) and Aussie restaurateur Elliot Milne (founder of Silver Tree Restaurants). The duo collaborated with architecture and design studio Macaulay Sinclair on the charming, intriguing interiors, and with Ryan Stanier, founder of The Other Art Fair, on the engrossing art curation.

Wallpaper* dines at Bar Blondie, London

The mood: Once upon a time in Queen’s Park

Queen’s Park’s rich history of influential creative residents and Lonsdale Road’s recent creative reinvention are palpable in the choices that shaped the interior. The mews’ architectural bones allowed an eccentric country-and-western theme to play alongside the leading idea: an artist’s residence. ‘We used legendary Italian director Sergio Leone, creator of some of the most culturally significant spaghetti westerns of all time, as one of our muses. The name “Blondie” comes from Clint Eastwood’s character in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly,’ says co-founder Elliot Milne.

A sleek bar in stained sapele and burl wood anchors the intimate 45-cover room; its shelves are layered with records, midcentury books, vases and lamps sourced through Vinterior. Bar-stool backrests are upholstered in Nobilis Paris’ golden, cowhide-like Velours Faon, while vintage chrome dining chairs by Gastone Rinaldi – sourced by Milne and reupholstered by Craftwood UK Interiors – sit beside plush banquettes conceived with the ease of a living-room sofa. Country-inflected prints lend the upholstery a homely, slightly raw character.

Macaulay Sinclair worked with LightOn on a scheme combining architectural fixtures with custom dim-to-warm bulbs. ‘Every western saloon has a chandelier, so we found one in Murano glass,’ Milne explains. ‘We also have Murano glass wall lights between the vintage prints.’

Designed by Tateside, the sound system plays a collection of new and second-hand vinyl curated with the help of Audio Gold in north London. Art provides another dimension to the wood-panelled walls: Lucy Robson created the tender commissioned work As Above, So Below, while original spaghetti-western posters came from At the Movies Posters in Marylebone. Among them are a limited-release 1970s Japanese poster for the Dollars Trilogy and two black-and-white photographic stills from the set of For a Few Dollars More, dated 1967.

The food: the best of both worlds

The word ‘bar’ rather undersells the kitchen. Its concise, deftly executed menu draws on head chef Alastair Walling’s background in southern French cuisine and executive chef Alexander Busca’s Italian heritage. A selection of snacks and small plates begins proceedings: Maldon oysters with champagne mignonette; thinly sliced Wagyu bresaola best paired with the house focaccia; and a cherry and pineapple tomato salad with black olive tapenade. It is an unspoken rule that you can judge a restaurant by the quality of its tomatoes. These make a persuasive case.

Handmade on-site each day, pasta acts as the backbone of the menu. Choose between creamy fazzoletti with Devon crab, chilli and lemon, or punchy paccheri alla vodka with ’nduja and pecorino. From the grill, the Provençal-inspired monkfish tail is served with mussels and samphire in a broth sharpened by peppery aïoli. Room for dessert? Don’t miss the red Mayan chocolate mousse with apricot and a gentle drizzle of olive oil.

While the cocktail list covers enduring favourites – namely the Vodka Martini and Venetian Select Spritz – the comprehensive wine list is a love letter to the arts. It opens with a section titled The Writer, celebrating Joan Didion while exploring historic and rare grape varieties, before continuing to The Actor, which champions inventive winemaking and independent producers. The Architect, a nod to Ray Eames, spans classic and contemporary styles, while The Director, inspired by Sergio Leone, spotlights iconic estates and singular cuvées.

Bar Blondie is located at 19-21 Lonsdale Rd, London NW6 6RA, United Kingdom

The silhouette is instantly familiar. The curved lines, functional simplicity and pale wild birch could only belong to a quiet Finnish design classic: Artek’s ‘Stool 60’.

Yet this version has a soft twist. Wrapping its circular seat and dressing its feet in ‘shoes’ is the time-textured presence of another material: natural vegetable-tanned leather.

Artek has unveiled its debut collection with Hender Scheme, a Tokyo-based leather brand, with a series of eight products blending the Finnish furniture company’s modernist design with contemporary Japanese craftsmanship.

A dialogue between two raw materials that slowly patinate with time – Finnish wild birch and vegetable-tanned leather – lies at the heart of the new Artek + Hender Scheme collection, which will be exhibited at London Design Festival 2026 ahead of its global launch on 10 October.

The collection includes the circular tops of classic Artek stools and tables wrapped in vegetable-tanned leather, a material also used to shape furniture ‘shoes’ for Alvar Aalto’s classic L-legs – compact containers to pop onto the bases of legs of tables and stools, to prevent scratches and soften acoustics.

The ‘A330 Golden Bell’ pendant light, a sculptural and reflective 1953 design classic, has also been reinterpreted in natural leather using 3D-printed moulds; while the fluidly organic ‘Riihitie’ ceramic plant pots created by Aino Aalto in 1937 inspired a new series of accessories, including leather coasters, a key holder and a clock.

Time – and the shifting beauty of the raw materials – is an elemental theme, according to Ryo Kashiwazaki, founder of Hender Scheme. With birch and leather ageing at different tempos, the ‘finished’ products are just the beginning – as a continuum of colours, textures and atmospheres is shaped by owners’ daily lives, memories and experiences.

It was in 2010 that Kashiwazaki set up Hender Scheme – its name inspired by the idea of gender-less products – in Asakusa, a low-key district in east Tokyo long known for its artisanal shoemaking heritage. Today, the name is synonymous with a clean-lined minimalism and material purity, as embodied by Hender Scheme’s crafted shoes and modern accessories, ranging from bags to furniture.

Its heartbeat is Sukima, a creative space in an industral-edged concrete building housing a gallery on a quiet street in Kuramae, east Tokyo, which stages contemporary art exhibitions. Here, Kashiwazaki spoke to Wallpaper* on the eve of the Artek + Hender Scheme collection launch – about shoes for stools, his passion for Artek, the spaces in-between and his quest for freedom.

Wallpaper*: What philosophy shapes Hender Scheme?
Ryo Kashiwazaki: Timeline. We focus on the timeline of products. Our philosophy is that our products are not finished at the point of sale – they are completed by the user, through the process of ageing and daily use. This is our manifesto. We work mainly with leather, which is a good material to express this concept. With natural tan leather, you can see all the changes with the passing of time and usage.

W*: Tell me about vegetable-tanned leather?
RK: When we started the brand, I just liked it. Then I realised it was a really good material to communicate our philosophy. I wanted to express a timeline through our products and brands so it became our main material. We are half-design industry, half-fashion industry, so we wanted to balance the timeline and make something not too fast but something new.

W*: It’s a sensitive balance.
RK: Yes – we call this balance sukima – the space in-between. We try to be in-between. We are in-between fashion and craft and technology.

W*: Hender Scheme designs are often very clean and minimalist. What inspires this?
RK: If I’m honest, we just naturally do what we want to do. There is no specific design strategy – we are very small. But the most important thing for us is to be very independent and very free. Freedom is the most important thing for me.

W*: What was the seed for the Artek collaboration?
RK: I’m a big fan of Aalto and Artek. I travelled to Finland around 15 years ago on my honeymoon with my wife. Of course I visited Aalto’s studio. I also owned a few Aalto and Artek products. We often do studies in our studio, to practise our leather techniques and our design – and we did one study, making ‘Uten.Silo’ [the 1969 plastic, wall-mounted storage system by Dorothee Becker, currently produced by Vitra] in natural leather. It was just a study for the studio, not for sale. But my good friend was impressed – and he took a picture and showed it to Vitra and Artek. That led to the start of the conversation about four or five years ago.

W*: How did the project unfold?
RK: At that point, it was not about collaborations. The starting point was just making conversation and trying to get to know each other. It was very natural. Then Artek’s managing director visited us and was also surprised to see this. We slowly started talking about what we could do together. We found we already have a very close philosophy.

W*: Where do you feel Hender Scheme overlaps with Artek
RK: I think it is about timeline. We like to respect natural materials. It is a little different in terms of shoes and leather, and wood and furniture, but I think it’s all moving in the same direction: the idea of respecting timelines and the ageing process. Industrial production involves trying to make exactly the same thing – but I feel that we are doing the opposite. We like elements that are unique and different.

W*: Can you tell more about the physical qualities of vegetable-tanned leather?
RK: It’s not coated, so it’s really pure, raw leather. Its surface naturally oxidies with time. Even if it’s not exposed to sunlight, it slowly ages. Firstly, the colour changes and deepens. Then it becomes marked or scratched, with its usage showing on the surface. So when you look at it, you can feel what happened in your life at different moments in time. The user’s memories can be remembered through the material as it ages. This works particularly well with furniture, as it has a long life.

W*: Tell me about the process of bringing this project to life.
RK: It took almost five years. It was quite a difficult balance. We wanted to respect Artek’s outlines and forms and tried not to do too much. There were so many different possible approaches. My friend Daisuke Motogi had already done the ‘Hackability of the Stool’ project [repurposing ‘Stool 60’ into more than 100 other objects, from a flower pot to a turntable, in 2023], so I couldn’t use that approach [laughs]. We did a lot of studies. We did mock-ups for bags. We thought about skateboards. But eventually, because our core process is shoemaking, we found that stools can also wear shoes. That’s when we found our concept. It’s not just about how this looks – it’s really functional. You can avoid scratches on the floor and also soften the noise.

W*: Can you tell me about the ‘Golden Bell’ pendant light?
RK: We’ve never made lighting before, apart from one table light with a New York retailer a long time ago. This time, we wanted to approach something new and we were drawn to this pendant light. Over the past five years, we’ve developed a 3D printer in our studio – and our techniques for making moulds are getting better and better. So I thought we could create a 3D object – which is how we made the lamp.

W*: What drew you to this light?
RK: I felt it was really beautiful. And from a technical point of view, I thought it could be made of leather. This pendant light has many different versions, mainly using a single piece. But in the archive, we found a separate version in several pieces. This one has three pieces. We made the top parts in 3D-printed leather – and kept the bottom part in brass, like in the original model, so light can shine through it. It was very difficult to make – it took almost three years.

W*: How about the accessories?
RK: These are inspired by Aino Aalto’s early planters. She made three different shapes. We wanted to take the shape and do something different with it. So we made a mock-up for these shapes and chose this one. It is a beautiful match with the material. We made these objects by dipping the leather into water and making a mould using a 3D printer. The leather is placed between two mould parts, with pressure applied. It takes about two or three days to dry.

W*: Can you remember the first moment you were drawn to Artek?
RK: When I was a student, I had a few friends who were into architecture and they had Artek stools, maybe a chair. That was my first discovery. Then after, I saw a lot of Aalto stools in Comme des Garçons. I’m very drawn to Aalto’s work. I think it is the balance. If you have an Artek stool in your home, you can feel its presence, but it’s not too much.

W*: And now we’re sitting in east Tokyo, which seems to be in the DNA of Hender Scheme.
RK: We’re on the east side of Tokyo. Asakusa nearby was historically a shoemaking neighbourhood. When I started making shoes here, there were no cafes or stores around. We call it shitamachi – or downtown. It’s very local and people are very connected here. Now it’s getting more popular among younger generations, as central rents increase.

W*: What is the shoemaking industry like here today?
RK: There are still many workshops around us and we still collaborate with many people – there is still an ecosystem here. But it is decreasing as people get older. We’ve also started in-house making now.

W*: Tell me about Sukima, where we are now. The concept seems to go far beyond shoes?

RK: Sukima is a gallery – an alternative space that aims to give opportunities to artists – as well as a showroom and office. The gallery has an exchange system. We don’t take commission for sales – but we ask [each artist] to give us one artwork. It is a really new concept and it works very well. We do four or five exhibitions a year. This piece on the wall behind me is by Kohei Yamada, a very popular young artist. When you avoid money exchange, you become very, very free. Our communication has completely changed as we don’t need to talk about money. I receive a lot of inspiration through this project.

W*: What were the biggest lessons of this creative journey
RK: When I’m designing products for Hender Scheme, I have the answer from the beginning. Then I work towards that idea. With my own collection, everything is inside out – I’m always judging myself. But with this project, it was a totally different approach. There was a lot of information, a lot of people. Especially this time, I really didn’t want to say, ‘Hey, we are Hender Scheme!’ I wanted to find a nice balance between the product and concept and attitude.

W*: And what’s your ultimate hope with this collection?
RK: To [put it simply], I wanted to show shoes for stools as a new product. Because I think no one has thought to put shoes on stools. Also, if I find these products in a 2nd Cycle store in Finland in the future, that would be great. But mainly? I hope people have fun with these projects. Just enjoy.

Artek + Hender Scheme collection will be exhibited at London Design Festival 2026, and will be released globally on 10 October 2026

It’s all go on Sloane Square: hot on the heels of Martino’s in the old Hugo Boss site, Clare Smyth’s Corenucopia round the corner on Holbein Place and a new pub from the Walmer Castle team opening in autumn comes this first international outpost of La Nouvelle Garde. The brasserie group has 10 Insta-friendly restaurants in its native France, including five in Paris and another five stretching from Lille to Marseille (Brasserie Bellanger, near the Gare du Nord, is excellent before a trip home on Eurostar). In true brasserie style, Olivia is open for everything from breakfast to a post-theatre nightcap after the Royal Court.

Wallpaper* dines at Brasserie Olivia, London

The mood: Cross-channel glamour

First impressions of the space (the old David Mellor cutlery showroom) are Gallic all the way, with a plant-strewn pavement terrace outside and checkerboard tiling within. Mirrors and Murano-style chandeliers soften the light pouring in through wraparound windows, while vintage posters and South of France postcards line the walls.

But co-founder Charles Perez has taken inspiration from the English, too, looking to the sort of grand Riviera hotels beloved of the holidaying aristocracy in the 1920s. Brits abroad, this is very much not, however. ‘The intention was to capture the energy and sophistication of that era through a contemporary lens, rather than recreating a period interior,’ says Mark Bithrey, founder of B3 Designers, the London-based studio responsible for the look of eight of Nouvelle Garde’s previous restaurants. ‘Textiles from Pierre Frey introduce layers of colour, texture and character, helping to create an environment that feels richly layered and distinctly French without becoming nostalgic or overly themed.’

The food: Brasserie classics done right

Head chef Rachide Sambu Baldé has a CV that takes in everything from old-school French (Galvin La Chapelle) to modern fine-dining (The Five Fields). But in the best brasserie tradition, this is not a kitchen focused on the creativity of the chef but on a menu of tried-and-tested brasserie classics that must come out right every time to have any chance of repeat custom.

In that, Brasserie Olivia succeeds. There are gougères full of gooey Parmesan, a garden-fresh plate of crudités to dip into salsa verde, butter-soft brandy-marinated foie gras, and bavette steak cooked rare with a mound of crisp, salty frites. Seafood is taken care of at an oyster counter for shellfish shucked to order and lobster tanks from which to select one’s own crustacean before having it anointed with garlic butter. The crêpe Suzette might not be quite as silkily luxurious as the one served at The Ritz, but it costs a sixth of the price. Spend any saved pennies sampling over 20 wines by the glass on a decent value all-French list.

But possibly the Frenchest thing of all is that dogs are made to feel very welcome – pack your Bichon Frisé in your chicest Chanel handbag.

Brasserie Olivia is located at 1 Sloane Square, London SW1W 8EE, United Kingdom

Turkey’s Cup of Joy has chosen Marylebone for its first address abroad. Founded in Istanbul’s Bebek neighbourhood in 2013, the speciality coffee and bakery brand now operates eight cafés across Turkey. Its London site occupies two floors on Blandford Street, opposite Jikoni, with coffee, pastries and an all-day menu served within an interior by EBBA Architects.

Wallpaper* visits Cup of Joy coffee shop, London

The mood: Istanbul in clay and stone

EBBA founder Benni Allan travelled across Istanbul while developing the project, visiting Cup of Joy’s existing cafés and studying the city’s stone walls, recessed openings and shaded courtyards. These architectural qualities informed the construction of the London interior. As such, clay plaster covers the ground floor and continues into the stairwell. Large pieces of Portland stone occupy the lower sections of the walls, with smaller fragments appearing higher up.

The studio selected and positioned each piece on site before applying the clay around its edges. The surface has the irregular composition of old masonry, though its form is distinctly contemporary. A continuous datum establishes a clear scale across the room. Within the thick walls, oak-lined recesses contain benches, retail displays, a water fountain and small seating areas. The oak bar sits diagonally across the ground floor, with tables and other custom furniture aligned to the same angle.

Timber and opaque glass panels cover the ceiling, producing an even, ambient light across the clay surfaces. The effect suits a room intended for both early coffee and long lunches, without exposing diners to the glare of individual spotlights. Woodblock flooring extends across both storeys, while a terracotta-concrete staircase with a matching steel frame connects them. Downstairs, clay plaster covers the ceiling and oak panelling lines the walls, creating a smaller, closely enclosed dining room.

The food: Coffee, eggs and Aleppo pepper butter

Cup of Joy’s house blend combines sustainably sourced Arabica beans from El Salvador, Brazil and Colombia, with flavours of dark chocolate, orange and hazelnut. Coffee is served in one-off ceramic cups made by co-founder and self-taught ceramicist Gökçe Kalyoncu. Their uneven profiles and glazed surfaces introduce a small element of variation to the daily flat white.

The all-day menu includes a bagel filled with feta and heirloom tomatoes, pistachio porridge, toasties and salads. Eggs Istanbul are finished with Aleppo pepper butter – a nod to the brand’s Turkish beginnings. For something sweet, Baba Au Tea consists of poppy-seed sponge soaked in orange rooibos syrup and topped with whipped cream.

Cup of Joy is located at 28 Blandford Street, Marylebone, London W1U 4BZ, United Kingdom

London-based studio Templeton Ford joins the Wallpaper* Architects’ Directory 2026, our round-up of exciting emerging architecture studios from around the world.

Who: Templeton Ford

Templeton Ford is an architecture and design studio founded in 2025 by André and Jessica Templeton Ford. The practice designs distinctive homes and buildings that are rooted in their landscape, history and culture. Their work draws on vernacular architecture and craft traditions. The team enjoy working on projects that feel inseparable from their setting: buildings that could only ever have been built where they are.

'We are interested in architecture that reveals itself gradually: buildings whose qualities emerge and evolve through daily use,’ they explain. The duo wants to create architecture that is memorable, rewarding to inhabit and deeply connected to its place.

Aside from their interest in place and materiality – working particularly with timber, brick, stone and lime that weather and age to create unique patinas, Templeton Ford also wants its buildings to be expressive and joyful, and to create places with a distinct sense of character that enliven everyday life. This often results in work that looks unexpected, yet entirely natural in its setting – as if it had always been there. 'We are inspired by the tradition of the Gesamtkunstwerk – the idea that architecture, interiors, landscape, furniture and craft can be conceived as parts of a coherent whole.'

What: Clay Rise

Clay Rise is a three-bedroom home in West Sussex completed in 2024 that balances heritage and contemporary architectural expression by using traditional Sussex brick and a distinctive curved sloping roofline. The house is constructed from a prefabricated panelised timber frame system and is embedded deep into the site to establish a split-level arrangement. This has the dual effect of creating a deeper slope to the rear, creating a dramatic curved form.

The building is oriented to optimise solar gain and shading, with a deep south-facing window allowing low winter sun to penetrate, while limiting summer overheating. Effective cross-ventilation is achieved via operable east-west openings, and a central stair atrium acts as a thermal chimney, drawing warm air upward to maintain comfort year-round. An air-source heat pump provides efficient heating and hot water, complemented by high levels of insulation and double-glazing.

Why: Architects Directory 2026

When the Wallpaper* Architects’ Directory was conceived in 2000, it was built as our bespoke international index of emerging architectural talent. Now in its 25th edition, our annual listing of promising practices from across the globe (now comprising over 500 alumni) champions the best and most promising young studios – a snapshot of talent showcasing inspiring work from all corners of the Earth with an emphasis on the residential realm.

This year’s anniversary survey includes 30 young studios (one for each of the 30 years of Wallpaper*), from Australia, Bahrain, Benin, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Denmark, Ecuador, Ghana, Greece, France, Ivory Coast, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Kuwait, India, Morocco, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland, the UK, the USA, and Vietnam. Welcome to the promise, ideas and exciting architecture of the Wallpaper* Architects’ Directory 2026.

templetonford.com

London-based studio Farid Karim joins the Wallpaper* Architects’ Directory 2026, our latest annual round-up of exciting emerging architecture studios from around the world.

Who: Farid Karim

Farid Karim founded his namesake studio in 2021 in London, working at the intersections of art, architecture and design. For Farid Karim Design, the name of the game is to go beyond functional problem-solving for its clients, motivated by the belief that ‘everyday buildings should be capable of enriching daily life through atmosphere, craft and delight.’

The practice creates spaces with ‘strong identities that emerge from close collaboration with clients, careful attention to context and a deep engagement with materials’. Be it a residential or a retail interior, the goal for the studio is always to produce timeless environments that feel deeply personal and distinctive to their clients.

The biggest influence on the practice is the relationship between architecture and craft, drawing inspiration from art deco, modernist interiors, traditional craftsmanship and contemporary art. The studio is also fascinated by contemporary manufacturing techniques, joinery, metalwork, and upholstery, which often act as a point of departure in the early design stages.

Karim’s interdisciplinary approach is further exemplified by an active artistic practice maintained alongside the studio, with work exhibited at past Royal Academy Summer Exhibitions as well as other independent shows. This combination of architecture, art and design informs a creative philosophy that strongly values spatial experience and material expression.

What: Deco House

Deco House is a London project that eschews the more subdued, contemporary extension styles of terraced homes in favour of a bold, neo-art-deco-inspired design full of character. The design increases the original floor plan from around 100 sq m to 170 sq m through the loft extensions, rear ground-floor addition and summer outhouse, as well as a reconfiguration of space internally. Drawing on art deco references, the extension plays with colour, texture and materiality, from glazed ceramic tiles and brass fixtures to timber finishes complemented by marble worktops, creating a warm, cohesive finish.

The landscape of the garden also plays a role in the extension, with an existing koi pond being integrated into the design as well as the circular summer house used as a home office. This project is an exemplar of Farid Karim Design’s interest in ‘how materials age, how light interacts with surfaces and how carefully considered details can enrich everyday life’.

Why: Architects Directory 2026

When the Wallpaper* Architects’ Directory was conceived in 2000, it was built as our bespoke international index of emerging architectural talent. Now in its 25th edition, our annual listing of promising practices from across the globe (now comprising over 500 alumni) champions the best and most promising young studios - a snapshot of talent showcasing inspiring work from all corners of the Earth with an emphasis on the residential realm.

This year’s anniversary survey includes 30 young studios (one for each of the 30 years of Wallpaper*), from Australia, Bahrain, Benin, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Denmark, Ecuador, Ghana, Greece, France, Ivory Coast, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Kuwait, India, Morocco, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland, the UK, the USA, and Vietnam. Welcome to the promise, ideas and exciting architecture of the Wallpaper* Architects’ Directory 2026.

faridkarimdesign.com

Stepping inside this north London apartment, you would be forgiven for thinking it is the very chic home of a gallerist or design enthusiast – and in a sense, it is. Yet Apartment 21 is much more than that, explains its author, London architecture practice Piercy&Co. The space, a residential unit in Kentish Town, is used as a private gallery, a guest residence, as well as a three-dimensional, full-sized showcase of the studio's approach to interiors and how they affect our everyday lives.

Step inside Piercy&Co’s London Apartment 21

The space, a one-bedroom interior in a 1930s former technical college building, belonged to a gallerist and was used as their residence when the practice's founder, architect Stuart Piercy, first spotted it. When it came on the market, he snapped it up, aiming to transform it into a craft-rich, spatial experiment and a domestic extension to the main studio's space for the business's guests and activities.

Piercy&Co is no stranger to creating finely tuned interiors – as shown by projects such as its One Triton Square. At Apartment 21, Piercy and Fiona Neil, the firm's director and head of interiors, developed the interior as more than a functional living space, they explain. It was conceived to be an opportunity for in-person 'hosting, gathering and collaboration'.

It was all about calibrating the interiors for an experience that feels organic but also subtly dramatic. A dark-painted corridor, a curved wall, a circular cutout on a wooden partition (created by Piercy&Co's long-term collaborator and timber specialist, Benchmark, no less) are all gestures that elevate the compact space to a truly refined moment.

Piercy says: 'I’ve never believed scale changes the intensity of the question. A tower has to meet the ground the way a handle has to meet a hand – with the same sense of connection, the same care for how a hand rests, a body turns, a pause. Apartment 21 is really about sharing food and conversation, but also experiments in furniture, mood and comfort.'

Custom-designed pieces by the studio in collaboration with Benchmark are made of British ash and elm and are scattered throughout. They are complemented by wool rugs, natural fibre upholstery and linen curtains. Architectural lighting by P&S Labs illuminates the interior.

'Apartment 21 is not a traditional project with a linear timeline of concept, build, photograph and leave,' Neil says. 'Here, the concept phase never really ended; it's a space in continual evolution. In a way, the whole point of Apartment 21 is that it's forever in the concept phase – we test, we trial objects and experiment with finishes. This is where the hosting component of the space is very important to us.'

‘Neuroaesthetics and the psychological and physiological effects spaces have on us lie at the core of our interiors studio – so having the opportunity to witness the effects of experimenting with the compression and expansion of volumes, or the response to natural materials and/or playing with spatial perception, all feeds back into the studio’s work.

‘It took a while to reflect on what Apartment 21 is really about – a lot was instinctive and conversational. But I think it is essentially about creating space to hold the ephemeral: whether that is changing patterns of light, a breeze that billows curtains or the hum of conversations, shared meals and the exchange of ideas.’

piercyandco.com

Late summer in London, August Bank Holiday Weekend, can mean only one thing: Notting Hill Carnival. And 2026 is more special than ever for Europe’s largest street carnival, with the event marking its 60th anniversary.

Also marking a significant anniversary: Ian Watts. The Londoner has been photographing the carnival for 50 years. In 1976 he was 'a young teenager, just out of school', living in a youth hostel in Harlesden. Armed with a second-hand East German Praktica, a basic SLR camera, and a bursting curiosity, he made his debut on the streets around Ladbroke Grove.

'The group of guys I was hanging out with said, “Let's go down to Carnival.” In the end, they decided not to go. But I went anyway,' he remembers. 'I shot [mostly] black and white, and also some colour film. And my feeling was: wow, this is a great experience! I was primarily drawn because I'm very interested in sound-system culture and reggae music. But I went on a voyage of discovery.'

Teenage Ian was hooked, and thereafter returned annually. He’s documented every Notting Hill Carnival since – apart from 2012 when, his youthful passion having morphed into an adult professional occupation, his career as a BAFTA- and Grierson-winning director of photography in TV and documentary took him to Siberia.

Now, from an impossibly rich archive of photographs numbering in the tens of thousands, Watts has curated a fraction of his still images – between 100 and 150 – for a free exhibition that’s showing on the towering screens of Outernet at the other, eastern end of central London. ‘Carnival 60: Ian Watts at Outernet’ is a unique record of over half a century of partying, freedom, creativity and social change, the pictures arranged in chronological sections to create an unparalleled, insightful visual narrative. As Scott Neal, creative director of culture and lifestyle at Outernet, puts it: 'The pictures Ian has taken from being a young boy to today, across six decades, are a vibrant record of what Carnival is about and how important it is to the fabric of London.'

It’s a peerlessly vivid, and still evolving, record, one that speaks to a lifelong mission that Watts lays out on his website: in his commitment to documenting the Black diaspora, his work 'explores themes of identity, diaspora, cultural expression and community, capturing both historic moments and everyday life'.

Not that that teenager had such grand ideas in mind. Watts says that he never 'consciously' decided that photographing the carnival would be part of his life’s work.

'Once I had caught the Carnival bug, I thought, well, I’ll go back in 1977 and continue the journey.' But over time, 'it became essential, and nothing else mattered other than going to Carnival every August. Nothing else would be on my agenda. I set my work [and life] schedule to make sure that I was around.'

As it happened, Watts’ first Notting Hill Carnival was the year of a heatwave (1976), and of rioting on the streets around Acklam Road 'under the flyover'. As he recalls, 'there was a lot of tension in the air because of the heat… That might have had some effect as to what happened at Carnival, because there were lots of people getting uptight with the way the police were treating people.'

But when I ask him to highlight his best and worst experiences, he cites two moments in the 1990s.

'I had progressed onto Nikon cameras with Nikon lenses. I tended to shoot the black and white stock on Ilford film, the colour on Kodak stock. But this year I decided I was going to use Fujichrome stock. This is a stock where you shoot transparencies, you take the photograph, and then you have to send it off to Fuji for them to process it, then they post it back to you. And unfortunately, what I think are some of my best photographs of Carnival, I haven't seen – they got nicked or lost in the post.'

As for his best one: 'It's difficult to pinpoint a year but it would also be some point in the 1990s. I started enjoying Carnival in a big way. One of the things I love is going there and you don't know who you're going to bump into. I meet old friends who I haven't seen for years. I always seem to bump into my brother. [There are] people you haven't seen for the whole year and then you miraculously meet them at Carnival.'

And, in his own seventh decade, Ian Watts’ commitment to Carnival is undiminished.

'As long as I can pick up a camera, I'll be taking photographs of Carnival. As soon as I arrive on [the streets], I'm energised and straight into the zone because I just love it. One of the best things for me about the Outernet exhibition,' he adds, 'is seeing that the photographs I took at my first Carnival, shot on that very basic Praktika, have held up. They're not as good as the digital photographs I've taken more recently. But it's nice that you have this record of very old photographs. It just shows my Carnival journey from 1976 right through to 2025.'

Finally: does this Carnival whisperer and sound system expert have any music recommendations for anyone heading to Notting Hill’s teeming, beaming streets this weekend?

'Depending on your taste, there's Brazilian bands, soca bands, reggae bands… But for me there are a couple of sound systems that are really important. I would go for Rapattack. They provide a nice selection of music. And then it's a choice between Channel One and Aba-Shant-I. Two very important sound systems. They play similar forms of music, but they are Carnival stops that I have to make.'

‘Carnival 60: Ian Watts at Outernet’ is free and runs 27 August – September 2026, outernet.com

Nestled in a verdant pocket of central London, a small yet perfectly formed minimalist structure peeks out from its leafy environs. Welcome to Finsbury Circus Parks Office, the new structure conceived to support the care and maintenance of its namesake park and the wider borough's public realm planting.

Explore the Finsbury Circus Parks Office

The building is the creation of London practice Studio Weave, an architecture firm known for its sensitive as well as playful approach to context and history – past examples include a Maida Vale public toilet created using recycled stone.

In the case of the Finsbury Circus Parks Office, architect and Studio Weave director JJ Cliff said: 'Our buildings sit most comfortably when they understand the role they serve within their wider setting. At Finsbury Circus, the Parks Office emerges quietly from the landscape, affording places to perch and shelter in the spirit of generosity that supports both human and non-human life in the city.'

The structure replaced an existing, older building on site, which was no longer fit for purpose. The new design contains a kitchenette/sitting room, a toilet, a wet room for washing and cleaning equipment, storage for tools and equipment, and a hub for electronics – as well as secure outdoor space for more storage.

The Finsbury Circus Parks Office's earthy feel is reinforced by the building's natural stone and clay render cladding. These materials offer a 'bold simplicity' and 'rawness', the architecture team explains. A base of Kentish Ragstone anchors the structure to the ground. Meanwhile, a gentle curve in the volume helps it softy intergrate with the surroundings.

Cliff continues: 'The City of London Corporation understands the value of long-term stewardship of public space, and it has been a pleasure to work with a client that champions this way of thinking in both architecture and landscape. This project continues a series of collaborations between the City and Studio Weave, alongside landscape architects and horticulturists including Tom Stuart-Smith at Bank Junction, Tom Massey at Jubilee Gardens, and Realm, here at Finsbury Circus.

'We look forward to seeing the Parks Office become a welcoming base for the City Gardens team as they care for the critical green spaces, whose health will be vital in helping our cities adapt to climate change.'

studioweave.com

London-based studio Pensaer makes it into the Wallpaper* Architects’ Directory 2026, our latest annual round-up of exciting emerging architecture studios.

Who: Pensaer

Pensaer is the Welsh word for ‘lead craftsperson’, which seemed a suitable fit for architect Rhys Howell Owen when he founded his firm in 2020. Staying true to its name, Pensaer creates architecture that is rooted in making, skill, and material understanding.

Pensaer focuses on a collaborative approach, working with skilled makers and craftspeople to make every space seem effortless and memorable. ‘At the beginning of every project, we ask our clients a question: “What is your architecture?”’, explains Howell Owen. ‘It’s not something most people expect to be asked, and often the answer isn’t clear straight away. That’s exactly the point. The question opens up a conversation about how someone lives, what they value, what materials they are drawn to, and what kind of spaces feel right for them.’

From here, the project becomes a journey of exploration. The practice enjoys brainstorming and planning until the result feels inevitable, as the solution is gradually excavated through the process. ‘It’s rarely something we could have predicted at the start. This shared discovery means we can look back on our projects and see the client’s personalities within them,’ shares Howell Owen.

What: Clay House

In London’s Peckham Rye, Clay House boasts a new extension that balances natural elements and sculptural detailing. Pensaer collaborated closely with the sustainability-conscious client to create a residence where the owner's personality and desire to create a ‘warm and welcoming’ feeling are felt throughout.

The studio leaned towards a muted colour palette of warm oak joinery and concrete flooring. The skylight fitted above the kitchen filters light throughout the space, dappling the walls. The smooth joinery here extends to an angular window seat, a perfect alcove in which to sit, unwind and feel connected to the garden.

‘Even though we work as architects, we think a lot about how things are actually made,’ explains Howell Owens. ‘We’re interested in the intelligence that exists in craft, particularly in materials and techniques, as well as in the experience of the people who work with their hands every day.'

He continues: 'A small adjustment suggested by a craftsperson, or a new way of working with a material, can completely shift the direction of a design.’

The extension was designed to provide multiple pockets in which to linger and relax as you move through the house. Every finish or detail offers a reminder of the craftsmanship that makes Clay House a soothing urban haven.

Why: Architects Directory 2026

When the Wallpaper* Architects’ Directory was conceived in 2000, it was built as our bespoke international index of emerging architectural talent. Now in its 25th edition, our annual listing of promising practices from across the globe (now comprising over 500 alumni) champions the best and most promising young studios - a snapshot of talent showcasing inspiring work from all corners of the Earth with an emphasis on the residential realm.

This year’s anniversary survey includes 30 young studios (one for each of the 30 years of Wallpaper*), from Australia, Bahrain, Benin, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Denmark, Ecuador, Ghana, Greece, France, Ivory Coast, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Kuwait, India, Morocco, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland, the UK, the USA, and Vietnam. Welcome to the promise, ideas and exciting architecture of the Wallpaper* Architects’ Directory 2026.

Pensaer.london

The V&A is celebrating the 80th anniversary of Freddie Mercury’s birth with a free exhibition tracing the singer’s style evolution.

Created together with Mary Austin, Mercury’s former fiancée and friend of 20 years, ‘Splendid Things’ unites eight famous looks Mercury wore in music videos and for performances throughout the 1970s and 1980s.

Costumes and accessories include the monochrome outfit Mercury wore on the cover of Queen’s debut album in 1973, the ‘Mercury Wing’ catsuit designed by Wendy de Smet worn in the ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ video and the crown and cloak designed by Diana Moseley, worn for his last stage appearance with Queen at Knebworth, in 1986.

Austin, who has lent seven of the eight looks to the V&A for the exhibition, emphasises the key role clothes held in Mercury’s exploration as an artist. ‘As we celebrate Freddie’s legacy in what would have been his 80th year, the clothes and costumes to be displayed at the V&A tell a hugely important part of his story both on and off the stage,’ she says. ‘Never mere accoutrements, his costumes and clothes were essential to his performances, creative vision, and wider self-expression, carefully designed to create a lasting visual and emotional impact that has reached across the generations and still reverberates today.’

It is an appropriate tribute to Mercury, who delighted in beauty and had a passion for art, design and fashion, remarking in 1978, ‘I like to be surrounded by splendid things. I want to lead a Victorian life surrounded by exquisite clutter.’

'Freddie Mercury | Splendid Things' will be at the V&A in London from 24 October 2026 – 17 January 2027, across the museum’s permanent galleries, and will be free to visit

vam.ac.uk

This Italian seafood specialist began life on Milan’s Via Savona in 2007 before expanding to two further sites in Italy’s fashion and design capital, then opening outposts in the favoured grazing spots of the international jet-set: the Cheval Blanc Paris; Porto Cervo on Sardinia and Paraggi Bay on the Italian Riviera; a mountaintop in St Moritz. Now it’s arrived at The OWO, the former Old War Office reborn as a Raffles hotel, but with its own dedicated entrance on Whitehall Place so you never feel like you’re actually in a hotel. It’s proved to be an instant hit with London’s Italian expats; needless to say, you should dress up as if for Milan Fashion Week when dining here.

Wallpaper* dines at Langosteria London

The mood: Whitehall’s Italian job

Italian architect Carlo Samarati was also behind the look of the Langosterias in Milan and Paraggi and died before he completed the London outpost, with Thirtyone Design + Management as project architect. The group’s founder, Enrico Buonocore, describes Samarati as ‘a dear friend of mine whose untimely passing left a deep void,’ though Langosteria London stands as a fitting tribute.

A travertine and Italian walnut counter in the bar sets the tone, with bottle-green Verde Alpi marble floors flowing through into the more casual of the two dining rooms, with alcove seating along one side and a wine wall dividing the space from the Historical Room beyond. This is the former meeting room of the Old War Office, where original stone fireplaces and stucco ceilings contrast with hand-painted, hand-embroidered silk wallcoverings by Misha. Guests sit on custom-made chairs by Medea and dine at Molteni tables, flatteringly lit by bespoke Venini lamps.

‘We wanted to respect the architecture of the Old War Office while injecting it with a sense of Italian hospitality and effortless elegance,’ Buonocore says. ‘The core intention was to marry the excellence of Italian design with Britain’s majestic historical legacy.’

The food: A taste of Milan

While the menu features classic Italian fish and seafood of fritto misto and sea bass in a salt crust, the kitchen goes beyond the familiar with signature dishes imported from Milan: chateaubriand of black grouper, say, or orecchiette damare, a dish so well-timed it is almost impossible to differentiate between the springy texture of the sautéed seafood and the al dente pasta.

It is simple cooking constructed from high-quality Italian ingredients – Sicilian langoustine, Mediterranean yellowtail – and presented with a creative flourish. A carpaccio of tonno rosso has ruby-fleshed tuna sliced into ribbons and folded like the petals of a rose, with an almost liquid centre of candied tomato and basil. The Sardinian speciality of Mazzancolle prawns ‘alla catalana’ has a pair of fat pink prawns on a bed of Camone tomato, celery and red onion: an eye-catchingly alluring assembly of fresh, vivid flavours and vibrant colours.

Finish with a wobbly tiramisu; its creaminess is more at the macchiato than espresso end of the coffee spectrum. For something equally sweet but with considerably more kick, order a Prince Alfonso, an in-house cocktail creation that combines Zacapa 23 rum with Dubonnet and aged cherry: truly the cherry on top of a very glamorous cake.

Langosteria London is located at Whitehall Place, London SW1A 2BD, United Kingdom

There are few hotels that are as much a part of London’s story as The Savoy. For more than 135 years, its guest book has been a who’s who of the world’s most celebrated artists, actors and musicians, from Claude Monet and Frank Sinatra to Marilyn Monroe, all the while setting standards with innovations like electric lighting, 24-hour room service and Britain’s first electric hotel lifts – today’s famous Red Lift – where nervous guests were once offered smelling salts before stepping inside. Now marking a new chapter, London-based hospitality design studio GA has carefully reimagined the hotel’s Edwardian and Art Deco interiors with a lighter palette, bespoke British craftsmanship and modern-day comforts, while preserving the character that has made The Savoy one of the capital’s best-loved landmarks.

Wallpaper* checks in at The Savoy, London

What’s on your doorstep?

Set between the Strand and the River Thames, The Savoy puts much of London within walking distance. Covent Garden is just around the corner, the West End’s theatres are minutes away while the Southbank Centre, Tate Modern and the National Theatre are just a stroll across Waterloo bridge, which also has some of the city’s finest views. Somerset House, Trafalgar Square, St James’s and Mayfair are all within easy reach too, making it easy to spend the day gallery hopping, shopping and exploring London’s historic streets. Be sure to make use of the concierge, who are at hand to unlock everything from sought-after restaurant tables to theatre tickets.

Who is behind the design?

The work of hospitality design studio GA, the Edwardian rooms have been refreshed with warm silvers, ivory silks, marble and antique brass, accented with ochre and amber tones, while the Art Deco rooms embrace richer shades of the hotel’s signature green alongside polished finishes and subtle geometric detailing inspired by the glamour of the 1920s. Throughout, original architectural features, including fireplaces and intricate cornicing, have been carefully restored, while bespoke furniture, artworks inspired by the neighbouring Savoy Theatre and an emphasis on British craftsmanship preserve the hotel’s heritage while bringing it firmly into the 21st century.

The room to book

Thanks to the hotel’s overhaul, all of the rooms are worth booking, but from the window seat of the Grand River View Suite, it’s easy to lose yourself watching London go by. Here, the updated Edwardian interiors bring a lighter, more refined feel to the room that, together with spectacular views of the London Eye, the Houses of Parliament and the Thames, makes staying in just as appealing as heading out. Amenities including Penhaligon bathroom toiletries, yoga mats and colour-changing vanity mirrors come standard, but guests in the River Suites get access to the dedicated butler services as well as use of the house car.

Staying for drinks and dinner?

Surrounded by some of London’s best restaurants, including the recently relaunched Simpson’s in the Strand, there are plenty of reasons to eat out. Yet dining has been central to The Savoy ever since the hotel set new standards for fine dining and service that would shape luxury hotels to come. Today, breakfast is served in the recently redesigned Gallery, where curved banquette seating, Murano glass chandeliers and a soft palette of greens, creams and blush tones create an elegant backdrop for classic dishes from Omelette Arnold Bennett to Grilled Kippers.

Later in the day, The River Restaurant, with its Thames views, offers an approachable British seafood menu where the fish and chips are difficult to pass up. Elsewhere, Savoy Grill continues its long tradition of British and French classics, while Restaurant 1890 offers a more intimate Michelin-starred experience. Before leaving, it’s worth finding time for a cocktail at the legendary American Bar or the black-and-gold Beaufort Bar, two of London’s great hotel drinking destinations.

Where to switch off

The spa and wellness facilities may not be the main reason for staying at The Savoy, but they’re a welcome retreat after a day exploring London. At its centre is a beautiful heated swimming pool, set beneath a glass atrium that fills the space with natural light, alongside a sauna, steam room and well-equipped gym. Meanwhile, a rotating programme of visiting wellness brands, offers everything from massages to Natura Bissé bespoke facials including the Citrus Ultimate Essence Radiance.

The verdict

It would have been easy for the refurbishment to dilute what has made The Savoy so special for more than a century, but the refreshed rooms have preserved the hotel’s character while elevating the experience for the next generation of guests.

The Savoy is located at Strand, London WC2R 0EZ, United Kingdom

Innovative Japanese craftsmanship lies at the heart of Seiko, which celebrates its designers’ creativity with an annual event in London. The Power Design Project – this year titled Passionately and Obsessively Crafted Watches – returns to Japan House, inviting Seiko’s in-house designers to play with the conventions of the traditionally uniform watch design.

The components of the watch itself are considered by the designers here, from the dial textures to the hands and watch surfaces, elements which are often overlooked but require intrinsic artistry and great care.

‘I told the designers, ‘We welcome ideas that go all out!’’ says Grand Seiko design director Shinichiro Kubo on the first Power Design Project relaunch in 2022. ‘Usually, when working on regular products, we design with clear goals and boundaries in mind and, for better or worse, we become accustomed to that way of thinking. So I reassured them that even ideas that might make them wonder – ‘Is it really OK to release something like this?’ – were acceptable. But I also emphasised that it had to be a full-swing effort – no holding back.’

This year’s watches are both playful and surprising, replacing traditional hands with cats, creating a textured maze instead of the usual bar indices and replacing the day indicator with positive text-based messages.

‘People have long asked, ‘Why do we still need watches in this digital age?’’ says Hisashi Fujieda, manager of the Seiko R&D Department. ‘In some countries, more and more people are unable to read analogue timepieces. That’s why I hope, through exhibitions like these, we can continue to showcase the beauty of analogue technology and help people rediscover the unique appeal of watches.’

Kubo adds: ‘Before we began these projects, watch exhibitions mostly appealed only to watch enthusiasts. But this time, we managed to engage people who had never shown much interest in watches before. That, for us, was the most rewarding part.’

Seiko’s ‘Passionately and Obsessively Crafted Watches’ exhibition from 27th August – 15th September 2026 at Japan House London. Free admission

japanhouselondon.uk

Man Hon Luk founded Vinyl Pimp, the second-hand record shop that was a second home for London’s DJ community, in 2007, making him an east London scenester long before he was a chef. His cooking conversion came at a poker tournament in Austin in 2021 when he ate at the now Michelin-starred InterStellar BBQ, where pitmaster John Bates introduced him to the ceremony of Texan smoking. After training Stateside in the art of low-and-slow, Luk brought his newly acquired skills back to pop-ups in London, then a two-year residency at All My Friends in Hackney Wick – and now, following a £36k crowdfunder, this permanent home above Crate Brewery.

Wallpaper* dines at Hon’s BBQ, London

The mood: Hong Kong in Hackney Wick

Luk designed the first-floor room himself, taking as twin inspirations his Hong Kong heritage and the Hackney Wick music scene. A liberal use of red takes care of the Hong Kong half: ‘vivid, energising and a direct nod to Chinese culture,’ Luk says. The pinwheel-patterned tables and bar stools are custom pieces by his friend, the Chinese designer Mo Tong; the chairs and lighting in the private dining room are handmade by furniture and interior designer David B Ross at his workshop on Hackney Road. Other pieces have been recycled or repurposed from the site’s previous occupant Silo as a tribute to that restaurant’s zero-waste ethos.

As for the music, that’s covered by speakers hand-built by Noise Control Audio in south-west France. The company was founded by veterans of Nineties rave sound systems Spiral Tribe and Bedlam, and its kit has since been put to work at Glastonbury, Notting Hill Carnival and the Roundhouse. DJs and live performances are promised further down the line, with the room shifting from restaurant to music-led bar after the last food orders at 9.30 pm.

The operation splits between ‘the smoke’ and ‘the serve’, with the meat spending up to 12 hours in the outdoor smoker before being butchered and carved inside at an open kitchen encircled by a chrome counter.

‘That openness is very true to how Texas barbecue is meant to feel,’ Luk says, ‘nothing hidden, everything ritual. The red and the repurposed materials tie back to the Chinese and Asian flavours running through the menu, so the room and the food are telling the same story.’ Are you sitting comfortably?

The food: Chinese cooking, right on cue

Imagine all your favourite meat dishes from the Chinese repertoire, exposed to the smoke of a Texan barbecue pit. The idea is to order meat by the gram, though be aware that Luk arrives at the restaurant every morning at 5 am to start smoking, and when each meat is gone for the day, that’s it – so pre-order when you book a table, or eat early and finish the evening with drinks outside on the towpath terrace at Crate.

The small-plates format means that two people could pretty much work their way through the entire menu, though if you’re not so hungry, the one must-order is the beef short ribs with Sichuan peppercorn sauce, the fall-off-the-bone meat encased in a caramelised, chilli-spiked crust, any leftover sauce doing double duty as a dressing to drizzle over beef-dripping fried rice.

Other smokin’-hot hits include bite-sized cubes of Taiwanese pork belly, the fattiness of the melt-in-the-mouth meat cut through with wedges of fermented radish, ox cheek made woozily aromatic with five-spice, and deeply flavoured duck that is far better than the rather stiff pancakes it comes with. The ultimate Chinese-American mash-up, however, is the mac and cheese, for which it is the highest compliment to say that it tastes as it came out of a packet, if that packet also contained springy cubes of smoked lap cheong sausage.

Vegetarians get braised tofu, a tomato and melon salad and cauliflower with smoked corn sauce – but really, you’re in the wrong restaurant.

Hon’s BBQ is located on the first floor of Unit 7, The White Building, Queen’s Yard, London E9 5EN, United Kingdom

The Architecture Association (AA) has unveiled to the public its Department of Tropical Architecture Archive – an extensive, fascinating and important digital platform documenting projects, pedagogies and legacies springing from its historical namesake academic division, which showcases the powerful impact the department's graduates had in shaping global architecture.

Discover the AA’s fascinating and important Tropical Architecture Archive

A significant research undertaking of over two and a half years, the project traces a range of personal and collective geographies from 540 AA alumni, spanning individual and institutional levels, internationally. The result is impressive. The archive digitised and now makes available myriad drawings, photographs and other media that were previously inaccessible – either in private hands or personal, family collections.

Of the archival holdings, the school has in its possession a large proportion of the work of its founding director, Dr Otto Koenigsberger, from 1957-71. This includes everything from his own student work under the tutelage of German architect Bruno Taut in the 1930s to his role as federal director of housing in India from 1948-51. In these archival drawings, one can trace the department's early pedagogical focus, which centred on climatic concerns such as orientation, aspect and topography.

Projects such as his Maas Family Summer House (1927) appear attuned to their landscape. Archival images show a large roof, spacious verandas and a robust, deep construction that responded spatially to site and setting.

Later projects by Koenigsberger in India, in his role as director of housing, show an attempt to adapt this language towards developing a contextual response to different climates. The Central College for Women, Nagpur (1940) shows an arrangement of rooms planned around a central courtyard, with deep reveals and overhangs to mediate the southern sun. Other projects in Mysore for the TIFR experimental building show experiments with louvred façade systems designed to mitigate heat and dust – an overtly modernist international style adapted to suit local site conditions.

These experiments are further evident in the archival teaching material, which highlights a concern around elements such as wind direction, soil make-up and sun-path diagrams. There is an analytical rigour to understanding place, and it is not hard to imagine how such a focus might have influenced some of the department's most renowned alumni, including 20th-century architecture critic Kenneth Frampton, known for coining the term ‘Contextual Modernism’ – modernism that responds to the specific conditions of place.

Although the department initially attracted a largely European cohort, many of whom looked to develop an understanding of climate-led design within newly independent nations as fertile ground in a limited postwar European context, this was subverted in later years. The department slowly established a strong identity and undertook an influx of professionals from over 80 countries outside Europe.

Archival entries include individuals such as artist, photographer and architect Maath Al Alousi (Baghdad, 1963-1964), who joined the department while working in the Ministry for Housing in Baghdad, and studied to develop an understanding of building construction with specific applications to an arid climate.

Projects developed on his return show meaningful engagement with context, using familiar local vernacular and reinterpreting this towards a version of Iranian modernism. Completing a range of civic and private projects in Baghdad across many different scales, his work deploys the same recognisable values taught at the department – namely, leading design solutions with an understanding of local microclimates.

Meanwhile, Indian architects, such as Ashok Behari Lall (1969-1970), joined the programme aiming to understand the use of locally sourced natural materials. On returning to India, Behari Lall completed the Institute of Rural Research and Development (IRRAD) in Gurgaon, where local stones, including granite and sandstone, are recycled to keep the project’s embodied energy to a minimum. The project also uses design strategies that maximise reliance on natural daylight, passive air ventilation, and an organic continuity between interior spaces and outdoor courtyards.

The AA's Department of Tropical Architecture Archive is now live, but it remains an important work in progress for the renowned London school. ‘There is still plenty more mapping to be done, to visualise the networks of institutions and practices which interacted with the Department… The traces of empire are everywhere,’ explains Edward Bottoms, head of archives at the Architecture Association.

‘What we want to do is to carry on documenting, and to utilise this as an open and equitable source, a live receptacle. We look forward to the research that will come out of this as an extraordinary resource to researchers,’ adds AA director Ingrid Schroder.

aaschool.ac.uk

In 2023, Broadwick Soho, a Martin Brudnizki-designed hotel, arrived on the corner of Broadwick Street and Berwick Street in London’s Soho with pink elephants on the façade, a rooftop bar upstairs and Italian restaurant Dear Jackie below ground as its red-roomed heart. Now, one of its central characters is being recast.

Beefbar gives Broadwick Soho a carnivorous new chapter

This autumn, Monaco-born Beefbar will move into the fun-loving property, taking over Dear Jackie’s subterranean space and ground-floor sister bar, Bar Jackie. The new address, Beefbar at Dear Jackie, opens on 10 September 2026 with bespoke interiors and a redesigned terrace for day-to-night dining by Brudnizki – very useful in a neighbourhood where lunch has a habit of becoming last orders.

Founded in Monte Carlo in 2005 by Riccardo Giraudi, Beefbar has built its name by giving the steakhouse a Riviera-infused new identity: think prized cuts, glossy rooms, a bit of theatre, and enough international appeal to carry it to Paris, Milan, Mykonos, New York and beyond. The new Soho outpost will become its UK flagship, following the brand’s Chelsea opening.

Giraudi says he wanted Beefbar’s new UK home to have ‘real soul’, adding that Dear Jackie gives the team ‘freedom to be playful with the menu’. Broadwick Soho’s managing director Joshua Gardner puts it in typically Soho terms: ‘We don’t take ourselves too seriously, but we care enormously about every detail.’

The menu will centre on Japanese Kobe, Australian Wagyu and Beefbar’s signature sauce, alongside London-only dishes including Wagyu shepherd’s pie and a truffle-laced Cordon Bleu.

Broadwick Soho is located at 20 Broadwick St, London W1F 8HT, United Kingdom

America in the early 1900s was in a state of flux. A slow transition away from the country’s agricultural foundations and a movement towards an industrial, modern world were triggering seismic changes.

Thanks to parallel developments in photography, it is a cultural shift heavily documented, and one that's at the heart of Dulwich Picture Gallery’s new exhibition, ‘Portrait of a City: A Century of American Photography’ (until 4 October 2026). Beginning in the early 20th century, when – thanks to the camera becoming a more affordable purchase for families – photography was becoming more democratic, the exhibition unites 38 of the era’s leading photographers, who capture the USA’s tumultuous volatility.

Tracing a chronological path through the century, the exhibition begins with Alfred Stieglitz’s The Steerage, an image that captured the sharp inequalities of class through the divide on an ocean liner. The reverberations from the Wall Street Crash in 1929 can be felt in important works by Dorothea Lange and Margaret Bourke‑White, who documented the devastating effects of mass unemployment and the debilitating poverty of the Great Depression that followed.

The physical space of the city takes shape in a multitude of ways, with photographers including Berenice Abbott, Arthur Leipzig and Ed Ruscha considering the architecture of the city itself, from the skyline to how the forms of the buildings and open spaces adapted to accommodate new demands in work and leisure. On the streets, Diane Arbus and Lee Friedlander turn their lens to people creating new ways to live, while Peter Hujar documents the communities ravaged by AIDS.

‘American photography offers one of the most vivid and influential records of the modern city,’ says Alexander Moore, exhibition curator and creative producer at Dulwich Picture Gallery. ‘By bringing this remarkable collection to London, we invite audiences to reflect on how the rhythms, challenges and possibilities of urban life continue to echo through our own – a century of human stories told with extraordinary immediacy and invention.’

‘Portrait of a City: A Century of American Photography’ is at Dulwich Picture Gallery until 4 October 2026. Presented in partnership with Savings Bank Foundation DNB and created in collaboration with Lillehammer Art Museum

The newest residential project by Stylus Architects offers another take on the classic Victorian terraced house extension. The London-based architects, recently featured for their Green Lodge project in Roehampton, turned their hand to another south London site, this time in an awkwardly shaped back garden plot.

Discover this ingenious London house extension

The clients called for a larger, more inclusive kitchen space, one that integrated better with the rear garden and brought light deeper into the traditional long floorplan. As the architects note, the existing house posed a challenge, for ‘no wall meets another at 90 degrees’. Rather than straighten up the lines, Stylus delved deeper into the angles, using the tapering form of the floor plan to maximise the sense of space. A new faceted brick garden façade amplifies the irregularities.

‘Etta House isn't a project about unusual geometry,’ explains architect Matthew Withers. ‘Geometry was simply the tool. By listening carefully to the site, every design decision, from the overall plan to the smallest brick detail, became part of one coherent architectural idea. The design is sophisticated. But the experience is simple.’

In many respects, the project is a straightforward one, especially in London where the Victorian terrace has proved an adept and flexible staging ground on which to expand, extend and alter. What sets Etta House apart is the way the new addition feels like a cohesive whole, a natural extension of the original structure that also has the character of a standalone pavilion.

The wedge-shaped floor plan flares out towards the modest London garden and the architects have ensured that the alignments of walls, windows and rooflights follows the established lines. One of the stand-out features is the ribbon of rooflight above the kitchen counters, running the full length of the extension and terminating above the opening into the front reception rooms.

Brick is also used on the interior, with chalk grey bricks and lime pointing creating a softer light. They’re paired with off-white plaster walls, timber floors and ribbed wood joinery on the kitchen. Deep green cupboards provide a splash of natural colour.

At the rear, the garden façade is formed by two angled brick blades, one housing an inset bifold door that opens onto the decking and the other framing a tall glass window that aligns with the rooflight. The walls are set slightly apart by a brick or two, creating depth, shadow and a bold sense of form.

To ensure this geometric precision is maintained down to the millimetre, Stylus set out drawings for the rear brickwork, as well as commissioned bespoke bricks, so that the edges were crisp and not interrupted by joints. The absence of any 90-degree angles is keenly felt but used to the project’s advantage.

StylusArchitects.co.uk

The perennial problem of the urban space premium is given another solution via this new house from OGA. The Cottage Annexe is an infill project that makes canny use of a tough site in North London's Stroud Green Conservation Area. Bracketed by grand Victorian terraced houses, the site was previously occupied by a modest two-storey cottage and a scattering of one-storey outbuildings, considered all but undevelopable due to its location and scale.

Enter OGA, an architecture and interior design firm founded by Oliver Grimshaw. Based in Berlin, the studio works in the UK and on the continent, combining new build with renovations that span all periods of architectural history.

In Finsbury Park, the challenges were obvious. ‘The site had defeated previous attempts at development - a land-locked urban fragment with a contentious planning history and little obvious potential,’ the architects say, ‘The plot sat squeezed between established residential terraces, its awkward geometry and sensitive heritage context making it one of the more challenging infill sites in the area.’

OGA’s solution was to incorporate the bulk of the site into the built envelope, so the refurbished two-storey structure sits alongside a flowing, single storey living space interspersed with two new courtyards. In this way, the Victorian streetscape is barely impacted, whilst carefully interweaving the new structure along the boundary of existing back gardens.

From the street, the existing cottage now appears to be flanked by a robustly rebuilt garden wall; this is the new annexe, a single storey structure with a generous vestibule linked the old and the new alongside an open plan kitchen, dining and sitting area – here you’ll find the signature circular window looking back to the main courtyard. The new living space is flanked by courtyards north and south, with a guest bedroom/study tucked away behind the new boundary wall.

Privacy and space are the key objectives, with materials mirroring existing structures and helping conceal the mass and scope of the building within. The courtyards bring light into the south-facing site without encroaching or overlooking the surrounding houses. The refurbished cottage now contains a bedroom, bathroom and snug area on the ground floor and the primary suite upstairs.

As well as zinc clad walls, OGA have used London stock brick for its warmth, variety and harmony with its surroundings. The courtyards are minimal, with traditional cobblestones, moss and Japanese Acer to create a minimalist outdoor sanctuary. Inside, bespoke cabinetry, subtly changing levels and exposed ceiling beams create a mid-century feel in line with the client’s tastes.

‘For all its privacy, the house never feels closed off - light moves through it freely, and the gardens feel ever-present, a quality made all the more remarkable given the constraints of the site,’ say the architects. The new structure only serves to enhance the neighbourhood but also create a true private sanctuary that doesn’t impose on its surroundings.

OGArch.co.uk,

Bookending the new London Olympia development is the Hyatt Regency London Olympia. The hotel is housed within an old car park originally built in 1937, which featured a double-ramp system to handle growing automobile traffic. Now a west London hotel, the building still champions the early modernist style of architect Joseph Emberton, but integrates contemporary functionality into its interiors. The Hyatt Regency London Olympia is an ideally located respite, with access to live music, museums, and parks just a stone's throw away.

Wallpaper* checks in at Hyatt Regency London Olympia

What’s on your doorstep?

Emerging from the Kensington Olympia overground station, the Hyatt Regency London Olympia greets visitors with its curved glass facade. The west London hotel is set within the £1.3 billion Olympia regeneration; its modus operandi is a stylish hotel of convenience and efficiency. With swift connections to central London and Heathrow Airport, visitors can also amble to Holland Park, Kensington Palace, the Design Museum and the Natural History Museum.

Who’s behind the design?

Design studio Twenty2degrees was behind the design of the 204-room property. Creative director Joe Stella and his team wanted to create a space which felt calm and unfussy, sprinkled with Art Deco touches. ‘We are always interpretive when drawing on design influences, rather than literal. The carpets in the guestrooms are designed with striations of contemporary colour, supporting the hotel's contemporary aesthetic while subtly reinforcing the wider narrative,’ Stella explains.

Materiality plays a central part in the design. Steelworks such as brushed brass-framed reeded glass panels are found in public areas. Furniture was rounded at corners and columns ribbed to soften the space and nod to the Art Deco era.

The room to book

There are three suites and 11 room types; each feels fresh and crisp. Each room showcases fluid and curvaceous architectural form. The Regency Executive Suite with a terrace offers London views, a dedicated work area, and living space for longer stays.

However, the hotel’s King Bed Deluxe room is equally relaxing and a perfect place to unwind after a day of exploring. In the rooms, guests may spot visual codes which nod to rock artists who have performed at Olympia, including Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd and The Chemical Brothers.

Staying for drinks and dinner?

What is refreshing about Hyatt Regency London Olympia is its adjoining restaurant, Idalia. Although accessible via the hotel lobby, the restaurant also stands alone with its own entrance, terrace and grand high-ceiling entrance. What usually fades into a hotel’s framework, Idalia stands out. It is found on the ground floor of the Grade II* listed Pillar Hall.

The cuisine is Asian meets European influences. Start with the Korean fried Gochujang chicken thigh with Siracha mayonnaise, and the burrata with broad bean pesto and pine nut crumb (I recommend asking for extra bread). Skip the lobster linguine and instead go for the miso-crusted black cod, with bok choi, chilli and spring onion, and pair it with beef tallow chunky chips and grilled purple sprouting broccoli. The cocktails are fun and delicious, but be warned it's sugar-coated glass gets quite sticky. Inside, marvel at the historic architecture but avert your eyes from large busts with synthetic pink wigs and plastic vegetation.

Where to switch off

Guests can find a dedicated fitness centre for those who find being active a good way to unwind. Otherwise, enjoy the public area, which is cozy and snug. Says Stella, ‘The design narrative is powerfully present from the moment guests arrive, but it doesn’t overwhelm, and there is so much for guests to discover on their repeat stays’.

The verdict

The Hyatt Regency London Olympia was designed for comfort and ease, which is exactly what it provides. It acts as an unfussy base to retreat to after exploring Olympia, London’s new cultural and lifestyle hub.

Hyatt Regency London Olympia is located at 7 Olympia Way, London W14 0EY, United Kingdom

‘The world is so chaotic,’ says Kim Kardashian over the phone from LA, ‘so I always wanted my home to feel really simple and warm’. In the world according to Kardashian, chaos is evidently a condition best answered with beige. The colour has become as central to her iconography as her hourglass silhouette, appearing in oatmeal, mushroom, taupe, sand and innumerable other shades that exist somewhere between skin and stone. In her new Skims flagship on London’s Regent Street, this familiar palette has been expanded into architecture. Pale walls curve around the space; surfaces appear continuous and almost seamless; a monumental female nude sculpture by Vanessa Beecroft presides with the authority of an ancient fertility goddess.

The store is grand, but in the service of distinctly intimate items: underwear, T-shirts, socks and the concealed scaffolding worn beneath a dress. There is an amusing disproportion between the monumentality of the space and the private, sometimes ungainly act at the centre of it. Pulling on shapewear is rarely an elegant procedure. It involves tugging, contortion and the fear that one may never fully emerge from it, at least metaphorically speaking. Skims has housed this negotiation between flesh and elastic within something akin to a temple. That scale is not accidental. The London flagship, designed by New York-based architect Rafael de Cárdenas – who is no stranger to minimalism, having begun his career at Calvin Klein in the 1990s – represents the fullest physical expression yet of a brand that began in Kardashian’s home. Founded in 2019, Skims’ earliest fittings took place in Kardashian’s closet, and campaigns were photographed in her hallways. ‘We were just doing everything at home all the time,’ she says. ‘And I wanted that to come off in the physical stores.’

So, rather than the brand’s design language being manufactured retrospectively by an agency, instead it emerged from the places where the products were developed and from Kardashian’s already intensely codified way of living. ‘People seemed to like this clean, monochromatic aesthetic,’ she says. ‘I wanted as much of the materiality from my home in the store, so it would still feel like it was part of that.’

Kardashian’s house, created in collaboration with Belgian designer Axel Vervoordt, is one of the most documented private interiors of the social media and reality TV age. Its vast planes of pale plaster have been photographed so frequently, they are no longer particularly private. Empty, monastic and almost suspiciously uncluttered, the rooms resemble a luxury retreat designed for someone who has transcended the need for possessions, despite their owner being among one of the most accomplished merchants of material desire.

Kardashian is aware that minimalism can easily become a euphemism for emotional vacancy. ‘People can feel like, because it is so minimal, it might not be warm,’ she says. The challenge, both at home and in the stores, was to preserve the calm while creating some suggestion of human temperature. ‘We’ve managed to add that warmth back into it.’ The contradiction is pure Kardashian. She is an avatar of maximal exposure who prefers minimal interiors; she is synonymous with conspicuous consumption but her aesthetic language is one of subtraction; she has made the body spectacular by foregrounding everything required to control it.

For nearly two decades, Kardashian’s body has occupied a disproportionate amount of cultural space. It has been desired, derided, moralised over, surgically debated and replicated through clothing, exercise, filters and cosmetic intervention. It helped to dethrone the attenuated, adolescent figure of the 2000s, replacing it with a new ideal based on dramatic curvature. Yet, as with anything relating to the female body, it also produced its own set of tyrannies.

Kardashian’s most consequential intervention was not the introduction of a particular silhouette, but her insistence that the work of producing it should no longer be hidden. She dissolved the old conspiracy of beauty, in which famous women maintained their appearance was the incidental result of water, sleep and a few drops of moisturiser. In the Kardashian universe, beauty requires an almost bureaucratic devotion to maintenance through fittings, lighting, hair extensions, shapewear, cosmetic procedures and the like.

‘I love shapewear,’ she says. ‘I have cellulite, I feel insecure, and I want to wear something that makes me feel good about myself and snatched inside my clothes.’ She doesn’t pretend that a compression garment resolves the insecurity. She is interested in what it enables her to do despite it. ‘It’s how it makes me feel when I wear something and I’m leaving the house. I’ve always owned up to my shit, no matter what.’

This is Kardashian at her most compelling: honest about artifice, not entirely secure, but unwilling to treat insecurity as a private shame. She doesn’t argue that the body must remain untouched to be authentic. Instead, the self is something one can continually edit without regarding the original as a failure.

Skims transformed that proposition into a global business. Shapewear had previously belonged to a faintly mortifying category of garments: corrective, medicalised and redolent of girdles sold in department store basements. ‘Granny knickers’, as they were once known, they presented a stark contrast to the skimpy lacy lingerie sold in dimly lit, boudoir-like boutiques. Their purpose was to conceal themselves along with the bodily irregularities they had been enlisted to suppress. Kardashian made the category aspirational. ‘When I started a shapewear brand, it wasn’t popular,’ she says. ‘People associated it with a girdle type. I wanted to flip that and make them feel sexy in it.’

To own one’s insecurity is not necessarily to escape it. Skims speaks the contemporary language of self-acceptance while selling garments designed to compress, smooth, lift and rearrange the body. It welcomes the body as it is, then offers to improve its lines. This is less a hypocrisy and more an accurate description of today’s cultural climate of self-optimisation. We are encouraged to love ourselves unconditionally while treating ourselves as an ongoing renovation.

Skims succeeds because it understands that contradiction rather than attempting to resolve it. In November 2025, the company raised $225m at a $5bn valuation and said it was on course to exceed $1bn in annual net sales. It was, by then, no longer an unusually successful celebrity side project, but a substantial apparel business with ambitions to expand further into physical retail, beauty, activewear and international markets.

De Cárdenas says that the product’s commercial credibility was apparent when his studio began researching the company. Skims was offering quality at a relatively reasonable price, he says, while nevertheless communicating aspiration. ‘It validated the project,’ he says, with the pragmatism of an architect who has presumably encountered more than one luxurious environment built around something less persuasive.

The brand’s most significant departure from the old lingerie industry has been its rethinking of ‘nude’. Before Skims, the term often meant a single, pallid beige: the colour of one person’s skin promoted as a universal absence of colour. Kardashian recalls finding underwear in arbitrary nude colours, too light or too pink to disappear beneath the clothes of most women.

‘It was important to me to have a wide variety of skin tones,’ she says. This now sounds obvious, as all successful cultural corrections eventually do. Yet the commercial lingerie industry maintained the fiction of a universal Caucasian flesh tone for decades. While Skims did not invent inclusive sizing or diverse casting, it brought both into the mainstream with the force of Kardashian’s image-making apparatus.

Its campaigns have also become exercises in cultural timing. Sabrina Carpenter made her Skims debut in 2024, just as her transition from former Disney performer to pop’s reigning confection was accelerating; Bridgerton star Nicola Coughlan followed during the fever surrounding the show’s third season; and Rosé fronted its 2025 Valentine’s Day campaign as the Blackpink singer’s solo career reached a new pitch of global visibility.

More recently, Will Ferrell appeared in character as fictional pro golfer Lonnie ‘The Hawk’ Hawkins, wearing white briefs, a vest and an expression of unearned masculine confidence. The joke was not that he possessed the wrong body for underwear advertising, but that the conventions of underwear advertising were overdue for ridicule. De Cárdenas sees that playfulness as evidence that Skims has begun to acquire an identity beyond Kardashian herself.

In its early years, she appeared in almost every campaign; now the brand is popular enough to withstand her absence. Casting an intentionally ordinary or comic male figure, he argues, is ‘very different from what anyone else in this space is doing’. Traditional intimate apparel sells sex and the idealised body. ‘Skims is aware of that, but I don’t think it’s the aim,’ he says. Its proposition is closer to ‘empowerment of the self ’.

Kardashian describes the desired effect as ‘comfortable, but safe and sexy’. Traditional lingerie advertising dictated the terms of sexiness with exhausting certainty, offering a narrow performance of feminine availability, usually directed towards an implied heterosexual male spectator. Skims is not devoid of eroticism, but its sensuality is more self-contained. As a result, the Skims store feels very different from the conventional lingerie boutique. There is little red satin, no suggestion of the bordello and none of the coy, faux-French vocabulary through which women were once expected to purchase panties. The environment is closer to a contemporary art gallery or wellness space.

Says Kardashian, ‘I want people to feel this is their safe space,’ somewhere they can find ‘the most comfortable underwear, the best-fitting bras’ and shapewear made with materials that she has helped to develop. ‘It seems like a really simple concept, but I want people to feel good in their skin.’ It is a simplicity that would sound banal were it not also an extremely effective business proposition. Skims is not selling the dramatic transformation promised by date-night lingerie. It is selling the smaller, more repeatable pleasure of feeling fractionally better equipped to face the everyday.

She speaks of visiting the store as ‘your little time to be selfish’: a moment away from children, work or other obligations, when the customer buys something for herself. That idea of private attention is built into the architecture, particularly the fitting rooms. De Cárdenas describes them as intimate but also stage-like, recognising that trying on clothes has changed in the age of the front-facing camera. ‘When you try on clothes, you take a photo with a selfie,‘ he says. With shapewear, which is intended to alter how the body appears, the impulse to photograph oneself is even more pronounced. The rooms, therefore, needed to offer intimacy while allowing the customer to feel ‘foregrounded’.

A customer no longer looks only into a mirror – she photographs herself in it. The fitting room has become both private chamber and miniature production studio. This feels especially prescient for a brand whose aspiration derives from Kardashian, who hasn’t merely inhabited the camera’s gaze but learnt to redirect it. Having published a book of selfies with Rizzoli in 2015, she is acutely aware her image is not simply consumed; it is produced, managed and circulated with remarkable discipline.

The store borrows that same sense of control. Kardashian may not speak in the technical dialect of architecture, but de Cárdenas describes her as discerning and unusually decisive. During their first call, she was able to approve and dismiss references within minutes. ‘She’s very efficient,’ he says, ‘quick to know what she likes and doesn’t like, even if she doesn’t know the terminology.’

Kardashian became involved in detailed discussions about everything from the baseboards and shadowed reveals between walls and ceilings to the exact tone of greige. She chose de Cárdenas, she says, because he immediately appeared to speak the same ‘architectural language’. ‘His materiality, everything that he was presenting – it just felt like exactly what I was looking for.’

At the centre of the London store, Beecroft’s enormous female figure makes its bodily logic explicit. Kardashian has worked with the Italian artist for years, and her sculptures have become central to the architecture of Skims just as much as her photography has to its campaigns. They possess the authority of classical statuary, but their bodies are softer, stranger and less purified than the marble gods of antiquity. ‘There’s this type of fluidity [to her work], from the style lines and the curves of the logo into the fits of the shapewear and the body,’ says Kardashian, who was adamant that this softness should continue into the environment. ‘I didn’t want sharp edges. I wanted everything to feel soft. Whimsical.’

For de Cárdenas, the Beecroft figure works because it simultaneously summons classical sculpture and resists perfectionist tendencies. ‘It’s not necessarily an idealised body,’ he says. ‘It’s a sort of real woman’s body.’ Enlarged to a monumental scale, it becomes both artwork and surrogate customer: the body not hidden apologetically in a changing room but given the spatial authority to organise the building around itself. Few of the store’s walls are actually curved. Instead, several large gestures establish a bodily softness that is echoed throughout the space. ‘All 90-degree corners are kind of filleted and radiused,’ says de Cárdenas. ‘It’s meant to mimic the softness of the body. The body doesn’t have these rigid, linear edges.’

‘If the whole thing feels curvy, then that’s successful,’ he adds, acknowledging the more prosaic fact that no retail budget, even a Kardashian one, permits every wall to undulate. Two large curved moments create an impression that the remainder of the space is able to borrow from. The store is also an index of Skims’ expansion. Much of the ground floor is devoted not to shapewear but to apparel and seasonal collections; the foundation garments on which the company was built largely occupy the upper level. There are dedicated areas for menswear and Nike Skims, alongside two banks of fitting rooms.

The entry itself is a calculated departure. ‘It shows less product than any of the other stores right off the bat,’ notes de Cárdenas. It is, he says, ‘an interesting experiment’: the most recognisably luxurious area is also the least encumbered by things to buy.

The architecture also operates on the senses beyond sight. Kardashian describes meeting perfumers who formulate aromas for spaces rather than fragrances to be worn on the skin: the smell of a room, a hotel or even a new car. A subtle, proprietary scent was developed to warm the minimal interior. ‘It could be just that subtle scent,’ she says, ‘but we’ve really dived into every detail to make it feel warm and its own experience.’ The customer may never identify the aroma consciously; it registers instead as an unplaceable feeling that this environment is unlike the one next door.

This is precisely de Cárdenas’ measure of success. ‘I don’t think we want anyone to notice any details at first,’ he says. ‘If people walk away enjoying the experience and not being able to point to why, then I think it’s worked.’ The project is about ‘engendering atmosphere more than anything’.

In hindsight, Kardashian has always been an effective translator of elite taste. She takes aesthetics that might otherwise remain confined to galleries, private houses and inner fashion circles, strips them of their obscurity and sends them back into popular culture. This process inevitably flattens certain meanings, but it also creates new ones. What begins as Belgian minimalism or performance art ends as the visual language of bras sold to millions of people.

This may be her most enduring cultural talent. She doesn’t invent every idea she popularises, but she understands which ideas are ready to become mass desire. She is less of a muse than a distribution system. De Cárdenas describes her as both a ‘hugely mythological figure’ and ‘just a normal girl from California’. The tension between those two identities has always powered the Kardashian enterprise. Her life is fantastical, and yet the banalities of it have long been subject to fly-on-the-wall reality TV.

Perhaps Kardashian’s greatest legacy is that her world does not ask us to choose between loving the body and altering it. It assumes we will do both. ‘I feel I’ve always been not the most secure,’ she says. ‘But as I gained confidence, I wanted to exude that in a brand, and to help others feel the same.’

And perhaps that is the true architecture of Skims: not the curved walls or carefully calibrated greige, but a structure of feeling in which insecurity is neither conquered nor concealed. Just like the woman herself, it is a thoroughly contemporary contradiction.

A version of this article appears in the September 2026 Style Issue of Wallpaper*, available now in print on newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today.

War Child’s annual Secret 7” record auction, sitting at the intersection of art and music, has become a summer highlight. The concept is simple, with figures from across the creative industries asked to submit a design for a record sleeve. All of the 700 results will be on show at London’s 180 Studios in August, before being available to buy at an online auction, with all proceeds going to the charity.

Designs are kept anonymous until the record reaches its owner, who will then discover if they have a work from a big name or emerging artist. The artists creating work for the tenth auction span eclectic mediums, and include ceramicist Clare Twomey, French artist and muralist Thierry Noir, British Sri Lankan multidisciplinary artist MURUGIAH, British Congolese visual artist Joy Yamusangie, The Haçienda designer Ben Kelly, and The Maccabees’ frontman Orlando Weeks.

The record itself unites 7 songs from John Lennon, The Last Dinner Party, Gabrielle, The Maccabees, Skin, Glass Animals and Bastille. Every song is pressed 100 times onto the seven-inch vinyl, meaning there is a strictly limited run of 700 records.

‘Secret 7" continues to demonstrate the powerful role that creativity can play in driving positive change, even in some of the most dangerous parts of the world, and we're hugely grateful to the exceptional artists who have contributed their talent to this year's campaign,’ says Charlotte Nimmo, War Child’s fundraising and engagement director.

‘Once again, we have some incredible artists – both visual and musical – helping to shine a spotlight on War Child's mission to protect, educate and stand up for the rights of children affected by conflict. We're looking forward to welcoming visitors to the exhibition this August, celebrating the intersection of art and activism.’

Across the nine editions to date, Secret 7” has so far raised over £900,000, supporting War Child’s work in protecting and educating the lives of children impacted by war around the world, including Sudan, Ukraine, Gaza, Afghanistan and DRC.

Adds Nimmo: ‘Our hope is that every artwork on display brings joy to the lucky people who win them in the auction, while representing meaningful change being made to the lives of some of the world’s most vulnerable children.’

Record sleeves will be exhibited at 180 Studios from 18 - 30 August 2026. Find out more at secret-7.co.uk

In our monthly series, we highlight the products, places and experiences we’ve bookmarked – and that you won’t want to miss.

The gallery circuit may be your best ally for escaping the ongoing London heatwave. Fortunately, August’s art calendar offers plenty of respite: from War Child’s Secret 7" project at 180 Studios, where seven musicians each press a track onto 100 vinyls and artists create a one-of-a-kind sleeve for every copy, to John Currin’s women with exaggerated physiques, set against Arcadian backdrops on Savile Row. When you get to lunch, skip the stuffy à la carte marathon – the snack of the summer is the Nepalese momo.

Escaped the city instead? A wise decision. We’re headed to Bali, where the Jia Curated architectural showcase takes over throughout August, and to Puglia, where festival season goes folkloric at La Notte della Taranta. If New York is on your radar, the season’s breakout star is Flaco, Central Park’s famously resilient escaped owl, now the subject of his own documentary, playing in select (air-conditioned) theatres.

The exhibitions: Secret 7”, ‘Portrait of a City’, John Currin

Hannah Silver, art, culture, watches & jewellery editor

August is a great month to enjoy exhibitions usually missed due to the normal hectic schedule. Take this pause before the back-to-school chaos of September and the frantic run-up to Christmas (too early?) to catch some quieter yet brilliant London shows. I'm particularly looking forward to War Child's exhibition of 7" sleeve designs by artists including Clare Twomey, Thierry Noir, Murugiah and Orlando Weeks, which sits nicely at the intersection of music and art. Elsewhere, 'Portrait of a City: A Century of American Photography' at Dulwich Picture Gallery promises to be a beautiful documentation of American urban life, and I hope to finally catch John Currin's masterful paintings at Sadie Coles.

The Secret 7" 2026 sleeves will be displayed at 180 Studios from 18-30 August

Portrait of a City: A Century of American Photography' runs at Dulwich Picture Gallery until 4 October

John Currin: Opening Credits' runs at Sadie Coles until 12 September

The pick-me-up: ‘Wild Inside’

Anna Fixsen, US editor

Everyone and their brother seems to be gushing about The Odyssey, but my summer to-watch list is topped by a different epic: a documentary chronicling the life of Flaco, an intrepid Eurasian eagle-owl who escaped his enclosure at the Central Park Zoo. Flaco, who was born and raised in captivity, went on the lam in February 2023. No one expected him to survive the mean streets of Manhattan – let alone fly and learn how to hunt. But Flaco defied expectations (and capture), going on to become a metaphor for a specific kind of New York City grit and resilience.

Award-winning filmmaker Penny Lane recounts the Flaco story in Wild Inside, a 90-minute film about the avian phenom and his against-the-odds transition into a wild creature. (I myself, during long summer runs in Central Park, would pause to search for Flaco in his favoured oak tree.) This documentary is heartfelt, sure (animal lovers may want to bring a hanky), but it touches on something bigger than New York’s orange-eyed feathered friend – the delicate boundary that divides our built environment and the natural world. Catch Wild Inside in select theatres beginning 31 July.

The dish: Momo

Anna Solomon, digital staff writer

Our art editor swears by House of Momo, the Dalston Nepalese spot known for its half-moon dumplings stuffed with minced meat or vegetables and served with a fiery dipping sauce. A staple across Tibet and the Himalayan region, momo has recently cooked up a reputation as one of London's most satisfying snacks.

So when I heard that Eat Momo – the no-frills Borough Yards canteen founded by sisters Trishna and Dipa Chamling as a tribute to the food they grew up with – had set up shop at my local pub in Leyton, I decided to check it out. Try these pillowy pockets of goodness at Coach and Horses on Leyton High Road, where they’re in residency for the foreseeable future.

The music festival: La Notte della Taranta

Gabriel Annouka, art editor

Forget beach clubs: this August, I'm heading to Puglia for La Notte della Taranta, where the best summer nights happen in small Italian towns rather than crowded resorts. I’m dreaming of hypnotic tambourines, a sea of people dancing pizzica, and a night in Melpignano with Ermal Meta at the helm of this year’s legendary Concertone.

La Notte della Taranta runs until August 23, with 20 stops in different towns across Salento

The cultural event: Jia Curated

Ellie Stathaki, architecture & environment director

If I were going to Bali this summer – I am sadly not! – I'd love to visit Jia Curated, the Bali-based annual gathering founded in 2022 by Budiman Ong, Rudi Winata and Yang Yang Hartono. This year's theme is 'Nature Weave', and, fuelled by the festival's community spirit, one of its architectural offerings, 'Architecture in Scale', zooms in on the work of a selection of architecture studios that consistently weave biophilia into their practice. The exhibition includes 25 models from studios across Indonesia, Singapore, Taiwan and Japan, including Kengo Kuma + Associates, Andramatin, Elora Hardy's Ibuku Studio and Cheng Tsung Feng. A Wallpaper* story by our Singapore editor Daven Wu will follow later this month. Watch this space.

Jia Curated 2026 runs from 13-17 August at Pengembak Beach, Sanur, Bali

Camilla Meshiea and Ryan Sheehan’s Counter 71 earned a loyal following in Shoreditch for its intimate chef’s table format. Now the pair have reimagined the venue as Appalachia, drawing on the culinary traditions of America’s eastern mountain range. This time, it’s personal: Meshiea’s mother’s family settled in Georgia before working their way west to Nebraska, while Sheehan’s Irish family put down roots in Savannah, where Meshiea and Sheehan later met and married. The space has been refreshed rather than rebuilt, with chef Ali Borer, formerly of Smoking Goat, brought in to lead the refocused kitchen.

Wallpaper* dines at Appalachia, London

The mood: A home from home

Meshiea says that the vibe at Appalachia should feel like she’s throwing a party for her customers – which means ‘flattering lighting and a room a little too small for the head count’. Extra covers have been created thanks to new countertops hewn from the same marble as the original counter now running along the windowsills, with flip-out stools squeezed in to make the most of the room. ‘At our launch parties, we could already feel the dynamic shift,’ Meshiea says. ‘Staff had to wiggle through a tighter space, and everyone felt a kinetic energy bristling in the crowd.’

The fast turnaround between Counter 71 and Appalachia was necessarily short to limit the time the restaurant was closed. ‘Independent restaurants like ours are a dying breed,’ Meshiea says, ‘so we’ve had to be inventive. Our design inspiration is informed by wanting our passion and personalisation to be palpable to customers. Ryan did a lot of the building work himself, so brings that sense of home and community to the space.’

Much of the art on the walls has come from the couple’s own home in Fulham: in the downstairs bar, Water Water is by painter Betsy Cain, a connection made through Meshiea’s friend Susan Laney of Laney Contemporary in Savannah, while Migration, upstairs, is by another Savannah-based friend, artist Lisa Watson. A giant textured mirror, meanwhile, also from the couple’s home, suggests mountainous topography. ‘I wanted the sense of Appalachia as a theme or concept to feel present only obliquely,’ Meshiea says.

The food: Fire and fusion

Borer’s cooking brings together the disparate strands of Appalachian culinary tradition forged from centuries of immigration and fuses them with fire-led, Thai-influenced technique. The result is a melting pot of American, European and Asian influences, which might result in anything from a curried crab omelette with chilli, ginger and seaweed butter sauce to a smoked pork chop with spiced collard greens, with sophisticated touches elevating the homely preparations: the butter-brined half chicken comes with miso grits and black pepper gravy.

With Sheehan in charge of the basement bar, called Lowcountry, the drinks here are as important as the food. Meshiea describes her husband as an encyclopaedia of bourbon, and the bar houses a collection of rare bourbons and rye whiskies. But there are contemporary takes on the American classics, too: try a banana pudding Sazerac, made with brown-butter-washed rye, vanilla rum, banana liqueur, absinthe and Peychaud’s Bitters – though not, perhaps, matched to the banana pudding choux bun on the dessert menu. You can have too much of a good thing, after all.

Appalachia is located at 71 Nile St, London, N1 7RD, United Kingdom

There is no single way to be a Black designer, and that thought sits at the heart of ‘The Nue Black Aesthetic’, a major exhibition opening at London’s Design Museum in November 2026. Guest-curated by author and journalist Charlene Prempeh and project curator Tiya Dahyabhai, the exhibition brings together more than 100 objects by 16 contemporary designers, spanning furniture, architecture, tailoring, product design and sculpture.

At its core is the idea that ‘Black design is not a monolith’. The exhibition opens with the question: ‘What does it mean to be a Black designer working today?’ For Prempeh, founder of creative studio and art consultancy A Vibe Called Tech and author of Now You See Me: An Introduction to 100 Years of Black Design, the answer has become more complicated over the years she has spent developing the exhibition.

The designers and their intentions may not have significantly changed, she tells Wallpaper*, though the world in which they are working has. ‘There’s been an erosion of diversity programmes. There’s been a kind of acceptance of, if not racism, then there’s been an acceptance of division. And the practice takes place within that context. And so that’s quite different.’

The exhibition’s title reaches back into history through its references to the Black Aesthetic of the 1960s and the New Black Aesthetic of the 1980s. Prempeh’s ‘Nue’ introduces nuance into the conversation around this particular generation, drawing attention to the individual histories, geographies and ideas behind the work. For Prempeh, the diaspora is central to that thinking.

‘I think the diasporic voice has become stronger and stronger and stronger as part of the Black community over the past ten, 20 years,’ she says. ‘That is an important focus and an important detail because the different countries across Africa, and across the Caribbean have very, very different stories to tell. That’s what’s different about the show. It’s not that these Black designers are different to that generation. It’s that I’m looking at a different type of Black designer.’

The exhibition unfolds across six sections, beginning with the history of Black design before moving through individual practice, community and the wider systems around design. Towards a Nue Black Aesthetic begins with seven decades of Black design and the practitioners and scholarship that have shaped the present, before Identity as Inspiration considers how personal histories and cultural references enter a designer’s work. Among the objects on display is Bianca Saunders’ suit for Usher at the 2023 Met Gala.

Community Building considers design as a means of creating belonging, with Labrum’s Arsenal 2024/25 away kit among the works featured, while Rethinking the System looks at designers challenging established ideas of value, hierarchy and the canon. The final two sections become more personal and contemplative. Black by Design, a new film directed by Samona Olanipekun, follows the featured designers through interviews and studio visits, before Finale, a site-specific commission by Ini Archibong, which brings the exhibition to a close.

Within that wider journey, individual practices reveal the different ways these questions are being approached. Among them is Simone Brewster, whose first museum show, ‘Platform: Simone Brewster’, is also at the Design Museum. For ‘The Nue Black Aesthetic’, she will present new work, placing her practice in conversation with the other designers in the exhibition.

Architect and artist Giles Tettey Nartey will show ‘Strange Notes’, his contemporary take on the balafon, a gourd-resonated xylophone originating in West Africa. The work addresses something Nartey has long been interested in: the way the Western design canon has often treated traditional West African design as though it belongs to the past. ‘Strange Notes’ appears in Rethinking the System, where questions around how design is valued, understood and carried forward come into focus.

The wider group includes Tejumola Adenuga, Taiba Akhuetie, Ini Archibong, Mac Collins, Phoebe Collings-James, Foday Dumbuya, Feben, Nifemi Marcus-Bello, Andu Masebo, Saul Nash, Tosin Oshinowo, Rachel Scott and Samuel Ross. Work by more than 20 additional designers, including Althea McNish and Yinka Ilori, expands the exhibition’s history across the 20th and 21st centuries.

Meet the creatives

Deciding who belonged within that conversation was not straightforward. The exhibition focuses primarily on UK designers, or those with a significant connection to the UK, with shared themes helping Prempeh determine its final shape.

‘At its core, I suppose curation is an act of selecting and organising,’ she says. ‘There are tens and tens of other Black designers whose work I both respect and enjoy who aren’t in this exhibition and that’s because I was looking for shared themes.

‘Making those decisions was difficult, but it came down to asking: what are the key themes that these designers can fall under, themes that make sense to visitors and that can help tell a compelling story about Black design today.’

One assumption Prempeh particularly wanted to address was the idea of Black design as ‘crafty’. ‘I’ve always found that quite difficult to swallow,’ she says. ‘So I wanted to show, I suppose, the level of intellectual rigour and complexity in the making that takes place in Black design. I hope this exhibition achieves that.’

It brings the exhibition to a more difficult question around how Black designers are understood once their work is visible. The designers may be brought together through a shared racial identity, but Prempeh is wary of Blackness becoming the endpoint for how their work is read.

‘It’s possible and useful to recognise shared themes within a community, because I think it allows a framework for deeper analysis,’ she says. ‘And the important part is the deeper analysis.

‘What we’re trying to do with the show is understand the details, systems and thinking that have informed individual designers. In the past, it’s been fairly typical to stop at the Black, and that’s very much not what we’re doing here.’

That analysis inevitably raises another question: who has historically been afforded the authority to decide what enters the design canon?

‘When we’re talking about the canon, we’re really discussing museum collections and established literature,’ Prempeh says. ‘It’s obvious who decides what enters those canons, it’s the directors of the museums and it’s the publishing houses. And so as much as I would like to say that all of the work that is done independently on the fringes is enough, I think it’s equally important to make sure that those often marginalised stories become part of these institutions.’

For Prempeh, challenging those structures can happen from inside established institutions or beyond them.

‘They’re gaining entry into these existing spaces and once they’re there, they’re shaping or they’re reshaping what those spaces are or what they can be,’ she says. ‘They’re also moving out of them completely and forming their own structures. I think both are equally important.’

That freedom also applies to the stories Black designers choose to tell about themselves.

‘Black designers now, I hope and feel, can decide when they want to tell stories about their Blackness and they can decide what part of their Blackness they want to talk about and when. And that’s the kind of freedom I think not just Black designers, but all designers deserve.’

She also questions why the responsibility for understanding those practices should continually fall on the designers themselves. When I ask what happens when Black designers no longer have to make themselves legible to predominantly white institutions, Prempeh turns the question around. ‘I think very much the onus is on the institutions to meet Black designers where they are and to make an effort to research and understand the integrity and intention of the Black designers. Because the only people missing out when that doesn’t happen are the institutions and their audiences.

‘Black design and the Black designers, not just in the show but globally, deserve to be seen and presented and understood fully.’

The exhibition closes with a new site-specific commission by Nigerian American designer and Wallpaper* US400 honoree Ini Archibong. ‘Mfon’, meaning ‘grace’ in Nigeria’s Ibibio language, is a vast chandelier made from hand-blown Murano glass and experienced alongside an ambient soundtrack. Its scale gives the different experiences, identities and localities carried through the exhibition room to coexist.

‘I think in terms of my own writing and curatorial practice, it’s always been about a series of questions being proposed as opposed to resolved,’ Prempeh says. ‘I think I want this moment at the end of the exhibition to do that for the visitors, for them to stop and start thinking about what the questions are.

‘I want the visitors to leave with curiosity,’ she says. ‘If they leave with a curiosity about Black design then I’ve more than achieved my goal and I’d be very happy.’

‘The Nue Black Aesthetic’ is at the Design Museum, London, from 6 November 2026 to 8 August 2027

Island Records and EMI have come together under one roof at a newly unveiled shared headquarters in King's Cross, London, the result of an 18-month collaboration between spatial design studio Interesting Projects and Studio Island, the labels' in-house creative team. But rather than merge two identities into one, the studios treated the brief as a curatorial challenge, bringing two labels with distinct personalities and legacies together in one space.

The answer was to approach the space like it was an exhibition. 'Commissioning and collaborating with Interesting Projects stemmed from my deep admiration for their exhibition design for the Keith Haring retrospective at Tate Liverpool in 2019,' explains Holly Williams, creative director at Studio Island, of why the design duo made a natural choice for this project.

Inside Island Records and EMI's London HQ: ‘a museum to the labels’

James Mason and Joana Filipe, directors of Interesting Projects, approached the commission like 'a museum to the labels', explaining the ask was for 'a space that feels alive, relevant and connected to the way music is made and experienced today'.

That thinking plays out as two parallel stories. Island's entrance is staged like, well, a stage, its base nodding to carnival sound systems, opening into a mural of Bob Marley's ‘One Love’, painted by British-Jamaican signwriter SignsbyJorge as a twin to an original in Jamaica by the Nurse Signs Collective. Both murals carry the signwriters' mobile numbers, painted on; Williams explains that 'if you need a mural, you know who to call'.

EMI's entrance takes a different route, built as a curated archive of memorabilia, photography and correspondence, including a letter criticising the label's decision to sign the Sex Pistols. Further in, a Corbin Shaw textile piece, Just Four Lads From Liverpool, reworks Burberry check into a Beatles homage. 'Corbin was top of our list for EMI because his practice explores Britishness, identity and often masculinity,' Williams says.

The two labels touch in the kitchen and dining area. A window was cut into the kitchen wall onto the Island side, framing a photograph of a young Amy Winehouse from the Frank era. Opposite, in a separate eating space, a matching window opens onto EMI's red wall, where Corbin Shaw's Beatles piece sits in conversation with an iconic shot of the Spice Girls.

'Island Records and EMI are united by a commitment to exceptional artists and enduring music, while each has its own distinct identity,' says Louis Bloom, president of Island Records EMI Label Group. 'The new office brings this shared ethos to life with a bold, collaborative space that celebrates the heritage of both labels while inspiring creativity, connection, and the next generation of artists.'

For Williams, the best thing about the project is the learning opportunities it has brought. EMI's history mural alone spans almost a century of British music milestones, including the fact that King George VI's 1939 speech declaring Britain's entry into the Second World War was recorded at Abbey Road. 'Through the art,’ she says, ‘staff and artists have learnt more about the history of both labels.’

When Olympia, originally known as the National Agricultural Hall, first opened in 1886, it welcomed a spectacle hosted by Paris Hippodrome Circus, which featured 400 performers, 300 horses, and six elephants. Since then, the Victorian event space in London’s West Kensington has hosted everything from international trade fairs to Vivienne Westwood's first runway show, and historic concerts by Pink Floyd and Jimi Hendrix.

Inside Olympia London

Nevertheless, in between such notable events, Olympia remained closed to the public for most of each year and had come to feel outdated compared to newer venues, such as east London's ExCeL centre.

However, this narrative has now changed. Olympia has undergone a massive £1.3 billion transformation and today features live music spaces, hotels, restaurants, and a new theatre alongside its preserved Victorian halls.

Spearheaded by Heatherwick Studio and SPPARC, the construction began in 2020 and the project has partially opened in summer 2026.

The architects decided to relocate all logistics underground and opened up 2.5 acres of accessible streets, elevated walkways and landscaped terraces. The masterplan also reimagined the 14-acre landmark to include year-round hospitality venues.

Entering via the street, visitors are welcomed to Olympia by two cascading escalators that run under the biophilic-inspired glass roofing. Reaching a mezzanine level, visitors enter the glazed ‘Canopy’.

Inspired by the design of Olympia’s original exhibition halls, by Sir Henry Edward Coe, it is formed of five curved structural steel arches. Each arch spans 22m, and together they support a transparent roof of 520 pleated glass panels. Beneath the glass canopy are various dining spots, from quiet cafes to buzzy restaurants.

Also part of the renovation are two new hotels: citizenM, a 146-room hotel inside the Grade II-listed National Hall; and Hyatt Regency London Olympia.

A new 3,800-capacity live entertainment venue, British Airways ARC, has just opened. Yet to come are a rooftop dining destination; and the 1,575-seat British Airways Theatre, the largest new permanent London theatre in almost 50 years (opening in 2027).

It’s estimated that Olympia will see annual footfall reach ten million across the whole destination and will contribute more than £600 million to the UK economy each year.

Says Thomas Heatherwick, founder and design director of Heatherwick Studio: ‘We’ve reimagined [Olympia] as part of London’s everyday life again, creating a new public street raised up in the air, sitting on top of the existing heritage halls. [This is] surrounded by London's largest theatre to open in 50 years [coming in 2027], a new performance venue, two hotels, offices, plus lots of places to sit and eat and be together. It is now a place where you can feel the city’s energy. The new Olympia reflects a quiet confidence, showing that we can take extraordinary British heritage and adapt it with care, imagination and purpose for the future.’

olympia.co.uk

‘Most of my shirts as a child were handmade by my Aunt Iris, who worked as a seamstress in a shirt factory in Peckham,’ remembers the London-based multidisciplinary artist Harris Elliott, who in 2025 was awarded an OBE for services to arts and cultural diversity.

The shirt is central to the first chapter of Elliott’s latest project, titled ‘Le Parlour’, a reimagining of the traditional ‘social salon’, which began in 16th-century Italy and flourished in France and England in the centuries that followed. Entering the central London space, which across the summer will be used as a listening bar, artist showcase, conversation spot and marketplace to purchase one-off collectables, guests will be greeted with a warren of stitched-together vintage white shirts, evoking marketplace tarpaulins.

Inside Harris Elliott’s London social salon, ‘Le Parlour’

‘As a child I regularly visited markets with my mum [and] they held a lot of wonder – the colours, the rhyming slang of the stall holders, the different groups of people that came together was all fascinating,’ Elliott tells Wallpaper*. ‘As an adult, whichever city around the world that I visit, I always seek out the local marketplaces; that’s where the heartbeat of every city is.’

The initial reference for the project – which will transform through various ‘chapters’ over the coming months – was the ‘front room’, a modern equivalent of the parlour where traditional salons were held. ‘At the start of the year I wanted to create an artistic environment for gathering that was influenced by food and play,’ he says. ’Using my home as a reference meant I could lean into personal narratives – I had myriad cultural stories to draw upon.’ Listening to music was one such memory: in Le Parlour, a two-metre-high mirrored panel sound system is encased in a frame-like ‘house’, while Elliott’s personal family photo album is displayed, museum-like, on a plinth, ‘referencing the idea that this space is an extension of my home’.

Running from late July until December 2026 at The Casbah on Little Portland Street, Elliott hopes that ‘Le Parlour’ exists not only as an installation, but as a place for ‘people of all walks of life to gather in an intimate artistic setting, encouraging [them] to play games, engage with art, design, and often framed around food and drink’. A series of one-off pieces will also be available to purchase, including a T-shirt made in collaboration with artist Ayo Banton, tote bags crafted from the vintage white shirts used in the installation, as well as a ‘Russian doll’ miniature version of the ‘house’ which features as part of the space.

After the initial opening in late July, the space will evolve into a new installation, ‘Design for Sound’, in September, which will see hundreds of vintage record sleeves, collected in West Africa, decorating the walls. From this point, the sound system will be in action, while a planned series of ‘moments’ will invite groups from the world of ‘sound and music to dance, drink and share conversations’. In October, ‘Le Parlour’ will metamorphose once again, turning into a showcase for the work of emerging Ghanaian textile and visual artist Ofe Amponsah, whose works – using a traditional tufting technique – are inspired by Kubolor, a figure from Ghanaian folklore.

Elliott, who is at turns an artist, curator and creative director, rose to prominence with his work styling some of Britain’s best-known bands and artists, among them Damon Albarn, Kasabian and Noel Gallagher. It would lead to the 2014 curation of ‘Return of the Rudeboy’ at Somerset House, a portraiture project with photographer Dean Chalkley, and ‘The Missing Thread: Untold Stories of Black British Fashion’, also at Somerset House in 2023. He is also the founder of Le Tings, a design studio which draws inspiration from the marketplaces of the African diaspora and his own African and Caribbean heritage.

With ‘Le Parlour’ – perhaps his most ambitious project yet – Elliott seeks to foster new intimacy, creating a web of connections that encompasses both longstanding collaborators and those new to the artist’s world. ‘It’s based on an invitation – an invitation to explore different narratives and to encourage the possibilities of future ideas,’ he says. ‘I want people to feel at home.’

Le Parlour is open from July to December 2026 at The Casbah, 20 Little Portland Street, London W1W 8BS.

Stay tuned to @harriselliottstudio for more information on Le Parlour’s programming.

This new architect's house – Draper Studio’s spectacular double-storey extension to a Victorian home in south London – maximises the drama within its classic terraced template, common around the capital. Designed for studio founder Adam Draper’s own family, the house had already been extended, setting a precedent for more involved and extensive works once the household had got used to the space and explored how best to make it work for many years to come.

Explore this south London architect’s house

‘[Because we’d been] living in the house a few years prior, knowing the location was great for schools and wanting a space for the next ten years, we discussed removing the existing lacklustre rear extension and maximising the home’s potential space at ground and first [floor levels],’ says Draper. ‘Although we got planning for a double-storey front extension, we worked out what was needed most: a full-width ground-floor rear extension to unify the three key spaces of a centrally accessed house, and a new double bedroom above.’

The major manoeuvre is a common one – taking out the rear façade and replacing it with a glazed, full-width extension for a garden-facing kitchen and family room. It’s a familiar device, especially with London houses, but Draper and his team have excelled themselves with the detail and materiality, stretching the budget wherever possible, from using spare stone bricks from other projects (‘kindly donated by my clients for use here’) to the most efficient brickwork patterns possible.

‘Recycling a repurposed material became a comforting theme during these radical changes to our home,’ says Draper. Some of the concrete foundations from the old extension structure were used as gabion walls in the rear garden, for example. The roof cladding is raw zinc, designed to patinate, while the glazing is low-key and unobtrusive anodised aluminium, and inside the walls are finished in limestone blockwork.

‘Although the CO2 saving is relevant, using [the limestone] as a textural finish that glows in the daylight from the skylight above is the true value here,’ says Draper. ‘The ground-level concrete floor was a bit of an experiment,’ he adds. ‘We cast terracotta tiles, stones, shells the kids had collected on holidays past – although I was correctly stopped from putting Lego in as a retaliation for all the times I’ve stepped on it. The floor’s finish has texture – it is deliberately not perfect, and warm underfoot.’

The primary material is the Redwood-pine timber frame, which is left visible throughout. ‘It’s everything in the space: a warm-feeling enclosure that feels linked to the main house in the winter and a pergola-like structure extending the garden when the sliding doors are cast open in the summer,’ says Draper. ‘With careful placement of rooflights, you’d hardly know there’s a double bedroom above with all the daylight flooding in.’

Much of the work was fabricated off-site to minimise disruption (and allow the family to stay put and save costs during the build). ‘Using materials that are real as opposed to finishes is also important, whether that be the concrete floor, the limestone blocks of the kitchen extension flank wall or the unpainted hemp plaster of the dining room,’ says Draper.

Using off-the-shelf lengths of timber also dictated the scale and rhythm of the frame, which in turn zones the 34 sq m extension into its different areas: kitchen, dining space and playroom.

As well as minimising off-cuts and sourcing second-hand materials where possible, the architects also salvaged elements like bathroom brassware, all in the name of lowering the environmental impact of the build. ‘It’s good to confront waste first hand,’ Draper admits. ‘Can stuff be repurposed, reused or retained, not just as an echo or a statement feature?’

The new house succeeds as both a laboratory of ideas and techniques and as a warm, inviting family home. ‘It’s a privilege to design your own home and explore ideas that I’ve been unable, to date, to convince clients to go with,’ says Draper. ‘It’s a little bit of material experiment, a narrative of what a home can be, all unified in a large, warm volume that finally links the house and enables the spaces to cohere.’

Draper.Studio

Ever since The Zetter first opened in Clerkenwell in 2004, the group has helped set the bar for London’s boutique hotel scene with its relaxed approach to luxury, characterful interiors and distinctly residential feel. Its newest opening, The Zetter Bloomsbury, continues that tradition across six interconnected Georgian townhouses neighbouring the British Museum, where check-in takes place over a glass of wine or coffee, immediately setting the tone for the rest of the stay. With interiors that have all the warmth and personality The Zetter has become known for, it’s the sort of hotel you’ll find yourself looking forward to returning to at the end of the day.

Wallpaper* checks in at The Zetter Bloomsbury, London

What’s on your doorstep?

Tucked away in Bloomsbury, The Zetter sits in one of central London’s most convenient yet often overlooked locations. The British Museum is just next door, while Russell Square, Tottenham Court Road and Holborn Underground stations are all within a short walk, making it easy to reach almost anywhere in the capital. Soho, Covent Garden, Oxford Street and the West End are all close enough to reach on foot, whether you’re heading to a gallery, catching a show or browsing the shops. Yet Bloomsbury itself is reason enough to stay put. Beyond the museums and shopping, it’s the sort of neighbourhood where it’s easy to lose track of time, whether you’re browsing an independent bookshop or settling into a café for a long lunch.

Who is behind the design?

The interiors are designed by James Thurstan Waterworth, and every shelf, cabinet and corner is layered with objects that feel as though they’ve been collected over a lifetime. European antiques sit alongside midcentury furniture, African textiles, Turkish rugs repurposed as ottomans and works by St Ives artists including Sandra Blow and Roger Hilton, while ancient Egyptian artefacts and a library of more than 600 vintage art and auction catalogues reflect the hotel’s close relationship with its neighbour, the British Museum.

It’s the craftsmanship that really sets the hotel apart. More than 500 cushions have been made from antique textiles; vintage fabrics have been reworked into upholstery, headboards and lampshades; Georgian cabinets discreetly conceal modern services, while hand-painted faux-marbled architraves, reclaimed timber floorboards, bespoke rugs and decorative pieces made by British artisans create interiors that feel deeply personal.

The room to book

Overlooking the secluded courtyard garden, the Junior Suites are well worth booking, with lofty ceilings and four-poster beds that give them all the charm of the Georgian townhouses they occupy, while marble bathrooms, richly textured fabrics, antiques and collected objects make them feel just as characterful as the public spaces downstairs. Thoughtful details continue throughout, from the well-stocked minibar tucked discreetly beneath the television to Verden amenities in the bathroom. If you’re celebrating a special occasion, however, the Terrace Suite is worth the splurge, with its wraparound terrace, claw-foot bath positioned beneath the bay window and views across the garden.

Staying for drinks and dinner?

Breakfast is served in The Orangery beneath a glass roof, where leafy plants, the morning light and views onto the courtyard garden make it one of the loveliest spots in the hotel to start the day, while an à la carte menu featuring dishes such as avocado on toast or a full English breakfast is complemented by baskets of pastries, breads and fresh juices.

Later in the day, the menu moves next door to The Parlour and its adjoining courtyard garden, where elevated British classics such as Scotch eggs and sausage rolls are joined by seasonal salads and larger plates, making it just as suited to lunch as evening drinks. On arrival, every guest is also handed a coin to exchange for a complimentary drink from the bar, from a coffee to a cocktail or even one of the more premium spirits, a small but memorable touch that perfectly captures The Zetter’s relaxed approach to hospitality.

Where to switch off

The Zetter Bloomsbury isn’t a hotel with a sprawling spa or extensive wellness facilities, but that’s part of its charm. Instead, switching off comes naturally in the hotel’s secluded courtyard garden, where a drink beneath the trees on a warm summer afternoon is the perfect escape from the bustle of central London.

The verdict

Characterful, welcoming and full of personality, The Zetter Bloomsbury is the sort of place that’s just as appealing to first-time visitors to London as it is to those who know the city well. As one of London’s newest hotels, there are still a few service inconsistencies to iron out, but once those settle, the hotel has all the ingredients to become one of the capital’s most enjoyable boutique stays.

The Zetter Bloomsbury is located at 2-7 Montague St, London WC1B 5BP, United Kingdom. Rates: from £210

Elizabeth Darling’s new monograph, Palace of the Ether: Broadcasting House and the Architecture of the BBC, 1922-1932, is a fascinating insight into the formation and professionalisation of the entity founded as the British Broadcasting Company in 1922 and granted a Royal Charter in 1927, becoming the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). From an ad hoc collection of offices and studios scattered around various London locations, the newly minted Corporation started a search for a site for a dedicated, purpose-built HQ later that year.

Explore the history of Broadcasting House and the BBC in this new book

This book is the story of that building, and the locations that preceded it, along with the architectural, interior and design decisions that were made to create what has been described as a ‘Palace of the Ether’. Broadcasting House, located at the meeting of Langham Place and Portland Place in central London, officially opened in May 1932.

In modernist architecture lore, Val Myer’s monumental, curved edifice, with its façade of Portland stone and evocative sculptural exhortations of the ethos and role of a national broadcaster, has always been slightly overlooked.

The structure was considered Modernism Lite, perhaps, a soft-pedalled version of the more muscular and ideologically pure approach demonstrated by contemporary structures like Erich Mendelsohn and Serge Chermayeff’s De La Warr Pavilion (1935). For the diehard modernists, the Corporation’s most effective expressions of contemporary design were in the interiors.

However, as Darling chronicles, it was the interior work of Raymond McGrath, Edward Maufe, Wells Coates, and Chermayeff that really set a standard, creating contemporary studio interiors that seemed completely in sync with the BBC’s mission to educate and modernise. Chermayeff and his peers were praised for their use of modern materials and contemporary furnishing pieces.

And yet, many of these pioneering spaces were swiftly upgraded and overhauled, either through wartime destruction or through sheer expediency – broadcast technology was moving fast, and they were quickly outdated.

As the book also shows, modern interiors often sat side by side with more old-fashioned, traditional spaces, complete with ersatz fireplaces, drapes and libraries of leather-bound books. Regardless of the interior approach, the BBC set about presenting Broadcasting House as a central part of its identity, a role it continues right up to the present day.

This is a text-heavy book, rich with research and rewarding historic anecdote. It tells a story that is still being written, albeit with the BBC’s authority and role being challenged like never before.

'Palace of the Ether: Broadcasting House and the Architecture of the BBC, 1922-1932,' Elizabeth Darling, £45, LundHumphries.com

Casual Italian may have been the big story on the capital’s restaurant scene in the past 12 months, but Londoners’ appetite for the sort of French bistro that wouldn’t disgrace the set of ’Allo ’Allo! shows no sign of waning – so much so that we’re now having to import them.

Buvette comes courtesy of New York-based restaurateur Jody Williams, whose West Village original, opened in 2011, is one of five Manhattan hotspots she co-owns with wife Rita Sodi. This is the US400 couple’s second bite at a London Buvette, after a Notting Hill outpost opened in 2020 and closed three years later.

Covent Garden, however, already feels like a better fit: squint from a pavement table under the red awning in Neal’s Yard and you could be in a French square straight out of Emily in Paris – or, perhaps, an especially photogenic enclave of Greenwich Village.

Wallpaper* dines at Buvette, London

The mood: Flea market chic

A buvette is the French word for a small bar, though Williams prefers to describe this place as a gastrothèque, her own word for a mash-up of café, bar and restaurant where one is as likely to drop in for a breakfast croissant and café au lait as a supper of cassoulet and Beaujolais.

Williams says that the New York Buvette was inspired by visits to flea markets and antique fairs, though here in London she’s been equally influenced by the building’s 400-year history and that of Neal’s Yard itself, where the British whole-food scene was kickstarted in the 1970s with the likes of Monmouth Coffee and Neal’s Yard Dairy.

Inside are exposed brick walls, warm wood finishes, a tin ceiling embossed with metallic garlands and close-set tables for two. If the dimensions feel more cramped than cosy, the best way to approach Buvette might be as an hour spent en route to somewhere else: a breakfast meeting before the office or pre-theatre ahead of the Donmar. Or pull up a solo stool at the marble counter.

The food: Small plates of bistro cooking

Williams might have a James Beard Award to her name for New York City’s Best Chef, but she taught herself to cook and spent five years in Italy and Japan before opening Buvette. All of which is to say that she is not bound by tradition. So while the menu is a love letter to traditional bourgeois cuisine – coq au vin and charcuterie, steak tartare and tarte Tatin – the presentation of the food as small plates feels bang up to date.

Not that you’ll want to split everything: a croque-monsieur, bubbled with golden-brown blisters of gooey Gruyère, is far too good to share. Carb-loading is the way to go: garlicky escargots come with slices of sourdough toast for dunking, while a tartine is spread with an artery-clogging amount of butter and draped with a salty sliver of anchovy and a tangy caper.

Not everything works quite so well when presented in miniature. A pot of moules topped with a pile of French fries makes excavating the mussels from their shells awkward, though it’s worth persevering, as the curry sauce beneath makes an excellent dipping sauce.

Even if you just stick to tap water, do take time to admire the design of the drinks list, which is beautifully illustrated as a homage to the Belle Époque and is as lovely to look at as everything else here.

Buvette is located at 2 Neal’s Yard, London WC2H 9DP, UK

Transport for London has revealed the latest in its ongoing series of Art on the Underground commissions for the cover of the pocket Tube map, courtesy of American artist Ellen Gallagher. Her piece, Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish, 2026, is the 42nd commission in the series and is an exploration of the capital’s long maritime history.

The Art on the Underground programme has been giving collectable visual impetus to the pocket Tube map – the classic ‘journey planner’ – since 2004. The maps themselves date back to pre-Harry Beck days and represent a beautiful chronicle of the evolution of the design presentation and physical reach of the underground network.

Gallagher lives and works between Rotterdam, the Netherlands and New York, building up richly layered multimedia works that draw on the natural world – particularly water – history, and mythology. Even when reduced down to the compact tube map format, Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish reveals the evidence of work and rework across the surface of the image.

The result is an abstraction that teeters on the edge of figuration, and vice versa, a miniature world of interlocking forms. Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish is a reference to Pip, the ill-fated young Black cabin boy in Melville’s Moby Dick, who fell overboard and was then rescued but left traumatised. The piece ‘imagines the underwater world Pip experiences; the skeletal form of a whale lying on the seabed forms the central composition and brings together themes of marine life, transatlantic history and memory’.

London was once the focal point of the country’s role in the whaling trade, with locations like Greenland Dock receiving carcasses to transform into oil, and bones to be turned into corsets. Gallagher’s commission is a mental map of this long-forgotten and bloody trade, with the skeleton shown intertwined with strands of seaweed that evoke the famously abstracted London Tube map itself, created by Harry Beck in the 1930s.

Another layer of meaning comes courtesy of London’s hidden and covered waterways and historic wells, such as Sadler’s Wells and the River Fleet. As we travel under London, all these histories are bound up in the soil that surrounds us.

As well as gracing the cover of the pocket Tube map, Ellen Gallagher’s artwork will also be seen on posters put up around the network, part of an ongoing commissioning project that has placed art in front of billions of tube passengers over the last two decades.

Art.TFL.gov.uk, @ArtontheUnderground

Crystal Palace Park's dinosaur sculptures – the world's first life-sized models of prehistoric animals – are among London's quirkiest attractions. This week, the sculptures, originally created between 1852 and 1854, have been given a refresh as part of a wider regeneration of the park, which reopened to the public this month.

Led by Bromley Council and Crystal Palace Park Trust, the work supports the long-term restoration of the Grade II*-listed park, which was created after the Crystal Palace was relocated from the 1851 Great Exhibition to Sydenham.

At the heart of the scheme was the conservation of the Grade I-listed Geological Court, home to the dinosaurs. The sculptures – created by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins under the guidance of palaeontologist Sir Richard Owen – were made when dinosaurs had only just been identified by science. Though many of them are now known to be anatomically inaccurate, they remain celebrated as a landmark of public palaeontology and a bastion of Victorian ambition.

During restorations, specialists used paint analysis, material testing and 3D printing to repair the sculptures while preserving their original materials – work that saw them removed from Historic England's Heritage At Risk Register.

Surrounding landscape work restored historic sightlines and topography, while the Upper Lake was desilted and fitted with a new recirculation system to revive its waterfalls. The Grade II-listed Italian Terrace underwent stonework repairs, the Grand Centre Walk, designed by park creator Sir Joseph Paxton, was reinstated as the park’s historic spine, and a bust of Paxton returned to its original site.

More than 7,500 tonnes of excavated soil were reused on-site, and new rain gardens and swales now help manage rainfall. Desilted lake sediment was repurposed into 500 sq m of habitat shelving, while around 58,000 sq m of wildflower meadow and 64,000 perennials have revived the park's once-famous horticultural displays.

Accessibility upgrades, a redesigned Penge Gate entrance echoing the Crystal Palace's modular architecture, a dinosaur-dig-themed play area, and a new timber Visitor Centre by Tate + Co complete the transformation.

Together, these efforts have secured the future of a uniquely Victorian vision – restoring a space where science, art and imagination first collided, and ensuring its prehistoric residents can continue to thrive for generations to come.

Artist Benjamin Slinger captures millennial nostalgia in a new body of work entitled ‘Empire’. Here, the British visual artist creates a series of wire-frame paper lamps constructed from vintage fast-food paper bags. Launching with a show in London (23-25 July at 96 Robert Street, London NW1 3QP), the series of lamps will be available from the artist's online store.

The McDonald’s and Burger King bags were collected over the past three decades, and the resulting lamps sit somewhere between sculpture, design objects and cultural artefacts.

Discover 'Empire' by Copyright Slinger

For the 'Empire' series, Slinger was inspired by the classic ‘Akari’ paper lanterns designed by Isamu Noguchi and the graphic identities of multinational fast-food corporations.

While the lanterns are functional objects, the artist’s swapping of washi paper for fast-food bags, with their corporate and consumerist graphics, is a critical reflection on brands within contemporary life – bold and demanding attention. Through the evolving bag designs, the series also documents changes in popular culture over time.

Such dives into design and socio-economic history are not unusual in Slinger’s practice, which spans sculpture, painting and writing. However, ‘Empire’ emerged from one question: ‘How can one produce a design or mass-market object as a work of art?’

Slinger has lowered the boundaries between quality design and mass consumption. The viewer is invited to consider how something of value is produced, how certain objects acquire cultural authority, and how consumerist imagery is embedded in daily life.

An initial edition of 50 lamps will be released across three sizes and more than 25 individual designs. Each lamp is stamped, numbered and signed according to its edition.

‘Empire’ is on show from 23–25 July 2026 at 96 Robert Street, London NW1 3QP, slingercopyright.com

With its colourful ceiling mural and steel countertops, artisanal ice cream bar The Dreamery, in Islington, north London, has gained popularity for its decadent scoops paired with crisp wines. Now, the whimsical bar welcomes a takeover by Spanish maison Loewe Perfumes.

The collaboration marks the launch of the new Loewe Pistachio scented candle. The green-fleshed nuts have long been popular in the culinary realm – not least as an ice cream flavour – but have been in exceptionally high demand in recent years, particularly since the rise of pistachio-filled Dubai chocolate.

Celebrate pistachio at the Loewe Ice Cream Bar

Translating pistachio into a fragrance that balances freshness and warmth, Loewe’s candle might be the most indulgent iteration of the flavour. Crafted in Spain using natural wax, the candle is packaged in Loewe’s signature grooved vessel. Its smooth pale green housing is a perfect pistachio hue – a shade you’ll also find painted across the façade of The Dreamery in its new incarnation as The Loewe Ice Cream Bar pop-up (running until 30 July 2026).

Set within a repurposed 19th-century building, The Dreamery was launched in 2024 by Alex Young and George De Vos – the duo behind natural wine bars Goodbye Horses and Stable Wines – and serves flavours from blueberry and ricotta to croissant and custard. Now, visitors can enjoy a limited-edition pistachio flavour during the Loewe Perfumes takeover.

There’s seating for 20 within The Dreamery’s whimsical interior, which retains its existing look – dominated by British artist Lucy Stein’s folklore-inspired ceiling mural, painted on a grid of backlit, Japanese unryu rice-paper panels.

Loewe Perfume's bespoke pistachio ice cream will be served exclusively for the duration of the partnership, until 30 July 2026, at The Dreamery 20a Halliford St, London N1 3HD. Open daily, 12-10pm

Mini golf, a playful yet serious pursuit, is a lesson in world-building, a challenge which nine artists in London haven’t been able to resist.

In Battersea, Miranda July, Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, Delaine Le Bas, Kaylene Whiskey, Saeborg, Natasha Tontey, BKTHERULA, Soda Jerk and Pat Brassington have created interactive golf artworks. The immersive works are a reaction to mini golf’s history, after it was created in the nineteenth century by Scottish women who were excluded from ‘real’ golf courses but refused to sit on the sidelines.

This subversive spirit runs throughout, in the holes which incorporate everything from surreal video to fairground games and fortune-telling.

‘I am a big advocate for mediums that invite artists to push beyond the scope of their regular creative practices, and those that ask audiences to engage with artworks differently, and so in general I think that durational or interactive projects are really interesting,’ says curator Grace Herbert.

‘Whilst digging into the history of mini golf, I was thinking about how there are so many things in our contemporary life that we don’t think about the origins of, that we take for granted, or even infantilise a little bit like mini golf, that have these incredibly rich and even rebellious histories. From here, the idea of a mini-golf and art exhibition by women and non-binary artists whose creative practices think about identity, feminism and politics in various ways emerged.’

Herbert was keen to include artists working across mediums and backgrounds in her curation, resulting in a game here interpreted by an eclectic community which includes musicians, filmmakers, performers, sculptors, activists, athletes, and quantum physicists. The results are fully immersive – these are games you want to play.

‘The brief to artists was to come up with a concept that could be integrated with the design and gameplay, rather than say making objects that would be plonked on a course as obstacles,’ Herbert adds.

’And they all really did that. Delaine Le Bas, for example, was talking about her experience as part of the Romani-Sinti community living in the UK and often feeling a square-peg in a round hole – and so we ended up 3D printing square golf balls for her work.’

The Art of Mini Golf, from RISING Melbourne and Battersea Arts Centre (BAC), is on until 26 July 2026 Battersea Arts Centre

Mayfair dining rooms often arrive fully dressed. Latine is better when it changes outfit. Set in Lancashire Court, the Franco-Latin restaurant by London-based interior designer Victoria Vogel moves from a bright ground-floor crudo bar to a candlelit first-floor salon, a mural-wrapped private dining room and a basement lounge in lacquer, velvet and brass.

Wallpaper* dines at Latine Mayfair

The mood: A venue of many temperatures

The ground-floor restaurant is the brightest chapter: limewashed walls, solid wood tables, bouclé seating and a marble-fronted crudo bar, all gathered around an exposed brick rotunda and central chandelier. Decorative tiling nods to the seafood-led menu, while cream, terracotta, chocolate and pale timber give the room its soft sense of warmth.

Upstairs, La Candela brings white wainscoting, twin crystal chandeliers and terracotta accents into a candlelit salon. On the second floor, El Cielo turns private dining into a scenic room, wrapped in a hand-painted mural by Melissa Wickham beneath exposed oak beams and a sculptural bronze chandelier. Downstairs space, LACAV, drops the temperature: lacquered walls, burl walnut, velvet seating and brass lighting make it the late-night room: darker, richer, and much happier after dinner.

The food: Ceviche first, Béarnaise later

The menu opens with colourful crudos: bright, sharp and built around citrus, heat and sweetness. Sea bream tiradito comes with coconut leche de tigre; red prawn ceviche with mango and yuzu. Yet, the starters are where the Franco-Latin exchange gets better: snails baked with chimichurri butter and served with brioche; Cornish mussels with Latine marinière and fries; pão de queijo filled with Camembert, with the option to add Oscietra caviar.

Mains continue the exchange: grilled hispi cabbage with Peruvian curry sauce and Comté, wild sea bass with ají amarillo beurre blanc, bouillabaisse with ají panca rouille, and chargrilled ribeye with chimichurri Béarnaise.

Latine Mayfair is located at 10-11 Lancashire Ct, London W1S 1EY, United Kingdom

Our Legacy has had an address on London’s Silver Place, a narrow alleyway in the city’s Soho neighbourhood, since 2014. Then, it marked the first outpost of the Swedish brand outside of its native country, and the choice of Soho, known for its after-dark denizens and hedonistic impulses, felt fitting: since Jockum Hallin, Cristopher Nying and Richardos Klarén founded the label in 2005, it has melded Scandinavian restraint with a countercultural energy.

Which is why, when it came to Our Legacy’s expansion – sales surpassed $50 million in 2025 and gained minority investment from Luxury Ventures, the investment arm of French luxury conglomerate LVMH – the brand chose full-scale renovation over a change of address. Opening this week, its new London flagship will occupy two connected storefronts, taking over 1-2 Silver Place.

Inside Our Legacy’s renovated London flagship

‘Expanding the story was something we needed for practical reasons, both to improve logistics and to create more room for a broader selection from our main collection,’ Cristopher Nying, creative director and co-founder, tells Wallpaper*. ‘We’ve always loved being on this street, and moving to a much larger space elsewhere didn’t feel right. Keeping the store intimate and close to our customers in London has always been important to us.’

Working with the Stockholm-based architectural agency Profan – Our Legacy’s longtime collaborator, founded by Anton Bogårdh, Disa Braunerhielm and Maximilian Olsson – the team have sought to capture the juxtaposition of rigour and rebelliousness that define the label. On the one hand, the space is what Nying describes as ‘clean and almost clinical, with a subtle laboratory-like feel’, as seen in planes of stainless steel and mirrors, undulating fibreglass and strip lighting, as one might find in an industrial setting.

On the other, there are elements designed to wear and take on a patina with time: namely, sets of curtains made by Stockholm-based Japanese textile artist Akane Moriyama, crafted from silk covered with beeswax, which will naturally ‘crease, age and evolve’. Elsewhere, birch and pine, used for flooring and staircases, were also chosen to degrade with wear (often, Our Legacy’s clothing is treated to appear already lived-in, with tears, frayed edges and pulled seams recurring motifs in the brand’s collections).

Artworks appear throughout the space, interrupting the otherwise minimal interiors: hidden deep within the store is Swedish artist Tobias Bradford’s ‘Nosedive’, a sculpture that depicts a bird nosediving into a metal fan, while a series of fan zines – many of them out of print – have been curated for the space, including those by BlackMass Publishing and the Swedish publication Jazz är farligt.

‘The store’s art and design reinforce the creative references that inform the brand, bringing elements of Sweden to the UK, and vice versa,’ says Nying, who also commissioned German photographer Rut Blees Luxemburg to capture ‘nocturnal London’ in a new series which will be distributed as postcards to celebrate the store’s opening.

It is an important opening for Our Legacy in its continued expansion from niche label to global fashion player: the brand now has five dedicated retail stores and, as of 2025, over 350 worldwide stockists. ‘[The renovated store] reflects our commitment to continually investing in ourselves and refining how we execute our vision,’ Oliver Saunders, the brand’s commercial director, tells Wallpaper*. ‘London has been our second home for the past 12 years, and the UK remains one of our most important markets.’

‘Over that time, we’ve built a strong community around the store, and expanding the space is both a reinvestment in that community and a way of reinforcing our presence in a city that has played such an important role for Our Legacy,’ he continues. ‘It’s a celebration of everything we’ve built over the past 12 years, while creating a space for the next chapter.’

Our Legacy London, 1-2 Silver Place, London W1F, is open now.

ourlegacy.com

There are few weeks in London’s calendar when the city feels quite as alive as it does during London Design Festival. Every September, museums, galleries and streets become the centre of conversation, where architects, designers and makers invite us to look differently at the spaces we move through every day.

The first programme announced for London Design Festival 2026, which returns from 12 to 20 September, looks at both the origins of design and its future direction. This year, both craft and artificial intelligence sit alongside one another as historic techniques are revisited through contemporary collaborations, exploring themes of migration, ecology, and cultural exchange across many confirmed projects.

London Design Festival 2026: programme announced

A bamboo pavilion with a bigger story to tell

Among the first commissions announced is The Pangolin Shield, the festival’s inaugural Landmark Project by the Anglo-Indian studio Studio Saar and structural engineers Atelier One. Installed on the Strand, the pavilion takes its cue from the pangolin, the shy, armour-plated mammal whose overlapping scales serve as the starting point for a structure made of bamboo and woven shields traditionally used by farming communities in north-eastern India.

While the pavilion could easily be appreciated for its impressive engineering, the aim is to encourage visitors to engage with it on a deeper level. It invites reflection on colonial histories, the movement of people and ideas, and the stories that materials carry as they journey across the Indian Ocean. Traditionally, the bamboo canopy serves both as shelter and as a space for contemplation, urging those on London’s busiest streets to slow down and be viewed.

On view all day, 12-20 September, Strand, Aldwych, London, WC2R 1ES

Made looks back to the Barbican

Renowned for its iconic brutalist architecture, the Barbican has profoundly influenced London’s design imagination. Its impact is evident in contemporary interiors, furniture design, and even the conversations surrounding urban living.

This autumn, Made revisits that legacy with a new Made x Barbican collection developed by designer Miriam Howitt, drawing on archival research into the estate and its original interiors. Furniture, lighting and textiles draw on the Barbican’s distinctive interiors. To accompany this, an installation at the Barbican during the festival explores how one of Britain’s most recognisable architectural landmarks continues to shape ideas of home decades after it first opened.

Installation on view 8am-11pm, 12-20 September, Barbican, Level G Hub Space, Silk Street, EC2Y 8DS

The V&A begins with an awakening

The V&A has become the spiritual home of the London Design Festival, and its annual commission often captures the mood of each edition. This year, ‘Awakenings’, curated by Carrie Chan and Kristian Volsing, looks at how design can reshape our relationship with the world around us.

Spread throughout the museum, the programme brings together designers including Aziza Kadyri, Eunjo Lee and Henry Svendsen, alongside new commissions exploring sound, identity, artificial intelligence and the natural world. There is a sense of curiosity running through the exhibition, as well as a sense that technology is no longer treated as something separate from craft. Instead, both are becoming part of the same conversation.

From 12 September, V&A South Kensington, Cromwell Road, London, SW7 2RL

The Design Museum turns its attention to people behind the practice

The Design Museum’s programme during LDF, as ever, spans fashion, furniture and contemporary design culture. A major ongoing retrospective celebrates Nigo (until 4 October), charting the Japanese designer’s influence across streetwear and luxury fashion. London-based designer, educator and cultural change-maker Simone Brewster’s Platform installation (until January 2027) continues her exploration of sculptural furniture and material histories, layered with references from 'palaeolithic fertility deities to African diasporic traditions'.

Away from the galleries, conversations take centre stage too. Brewster joins Jasmi Hussein, Emefa Cole and Hettie Judah for a discussion exploring design and motherhood, shifting the focus away from finished work towards the lives and experiences that shape creative work.

224-238 Kensington High St, London W8 6AG; visit designmuseum.org for the full programme

Japanese craft meets contemporary design

This year, Craft x Tech Tokai Project continues its tradition of collaboration between Japanese artisans and international designers. The exhibition highlights the fusion of traditional craftsmanship and contemporary design, featuring media such as ceramics, washi paper, lacquer, textiles, and woodworking.

It spotlights designers such as Bethan Laura Wood, David Caon, and Philippe Malouin, who engage with artisans whose techniques have been refined and passed down through generations, showcasing the exciting possibilities born from this rich exchange of ideas.

12-30 September, Victoria & Albert Museum, Medieval & Renaissance, Room 64b, The Simon Sainsbury Gallery, Cromwell Road, London, SW7 2RL

New conversations between Asia and London

Elsewhere, cultural platform MixZ continues its exploration of exchange between Asia and the UK through a pair of exhibitions taking place at the V&A and the Old Selfridges Hotel, an event space within the London department store.

At the V&A, ‘MixZ: China White Reimagined’ highlights the ancient beauty of Dehua porcelain. At the Old Selfridges Hotel, ‘Future Living with Shenzhen Style’ explores future living through future with immersive technologies and artificial intelligence. Throughout both presentations, the focus is on collaboration as community, underscoring the idea that true innovation seldom occurs in a vacuum. Instead, it flourishes through the shared knowledge, materials, and ideas that flow between different cultures.

V&A, Cromwell Road London, SW7 2RL
Selfridges, 1 Orchard St, London W1H 6HJ

St Paul’s Cathedral becomes a space of light

Ukrainian artist and lighting designer Mykola Kabluka will install two works inside St Paul’s Cathedral. Created with his Kyiv studio, Expolight, Soul and The Point of Unity examines the moment when a thought or feeling remains private.

Soul draws on research into the brain during daydreaming and inward thought. Its audiovisual imagery has no set sequence. Light travels through glass and responds to people moving around the cathedral, changing the work as they pass. The Point of Unity debuted at Burning Man in 2025 and will make its UK debut at the LDF. Some 3,500 fibre optic points illuminate the sculpture after dark; during the day, its mirrored surfaces reflect the cathedral around it. Kabluka explores how an individual presence becomes part of a larger whole.

Created during the ongoing war against Ukraine, Kabluka highlights his thoughts and personal experience of uncertainty and hope.

St. Paul's Churchyard, London EC4M 8AD

The Speaking Oasis gives palm weaving a 'new language'

Saudi architect Shahad Alazzaz turns to the date palm for The Speaking Oasis, presented at The Lavery in Cromwell Place during the London Design Festival. Her project explores how a material deeply woven into Saudi cultural life can be used in contemporary design.

The largest self-contained palm oasis, Al Hasa Oasis in eastern Saudi Arabia, acts as a reference point. Its extensive date palm groves have long made it a place of movement and exchange, while generations of craftspeople have worked with the palm through weaving. Supported by the Ithra Palm Initiative, launched by the King Abdulaziz Centre for World Culture in Dhahran, Alazzaz, founder of Azaz Architects, brings this skill and knowledge into architecture and design, exploring how the material and its techniques can develop.

On view all day, 12-20 September,The Lavery, (3 Cromwell Place), London SW7 2JE

Mali Mowcka creates a special sanctuary in Shoreditch

At the Hart, Shoreditch has invited contemporary urban artist Mali Mowcka to create Sanctum of Renewal inside its pan-Asian restaurant 'UBA', turning it into a contemporary sacred space for the London Design Festival, filling the upper part of the room with wooden pieces that descend from the ceiling.

Making between 160 and 200 forms by hand, each with an organic shape. Translucent resin petals will be suspended among them, drawing on Yūgen, the Japanese idea that 'beauty can be found in what remains partly unseen.' UBA will continue operating as a restaurant throughout the installation, with guests eating beneath the sculpture as staff move through the room.
On view all day, 12-20 September, 61 - 67 Great Eastern St, London EC2A 3HU

Brompton Design District puts craft in focus

Brompton Design District returns for London Design Festival under the direction of British and Italian curator and gallerist Alex Tieghi-Walker. The Wallpaper* USA 400 honouree has invited designers and curators to occupy spaces across the district, bringing together more than 150 participants. Isamaya Ffrench and former guest editor Laila Gohar are among them, along with a group of New York designers making their festival debut alongside launches from designers and brands including Molteni&C, Cassina and Tai Ping, presenting new collections from their Brompton showrooms.

Following his 2025 programme, Tieghi-Walker returns with a closer look at craft and contemporary design, introducing work by new voices London audiences may not yet know. Taking place from 12 to 20 September, this year's programme considers the personal attachments we form with the objects and design around us. Titled Perfectly Imperfect, the programme opens up studios and workshops, bringing unfinished experiments into public view.

On view all day, 12-20 September, The Lavery, (3 Cromwell Place), London SW7 2JE

Byron Pritchard lets the material decide

Also at Brompton Design District, British designer Byron Pritchard presents a new body of work featuring a slab of sycamore at the London Design Festival. Building on traditional woodworking techniques and with a deep appreciation for the craft, he and his team will, in work yet to be completed, work entirely by hand in a garage in Cromwell Mews, following the grain and responding to the timber as they go.

Finding Form brings this part of the design process into public view with no drawing setting out the final object; visitors will see each decision take shape as the work develops. To do this, Pritchard will research historic woodworking at the nearby V&A, then return to the garage and keep making.

On view all day, 12-20 September, Cromwell Mews Garage, London SW7 2JS

Past Made Present takes over Ham House

At Ham House, students from Kingston University’s MA Product & Furniture Design programme have responded to a place with more than 400 years of history. Developed with The Storybox Collective and the National Trust, Past Made Present brings the work of a new generation of designers into the house and gardens that inspired it.

Projects and prototypes will be installed throughout the property, drawing on archival research and stories connected to the house. Accessibility is central to the exhibition, with the students considering how design can give visitors another way to experience a historic place. Their material experiments enter into the existing rooms quietly, responding to Ham House as it is.

From 10 September to 11 October, Ham St, Ham, Richmond TW10 7RS

Plans have been revealed for London's BT Tower to be transformed into a hotel by London-based studio Orms Architecture. The consultation, which took place on Monday (13 July 2026), included details of the planned overhaul of the 177m-tall tower, such as the extension of the tower’s podium buildings, a swimming pool, and a public square.

The proposal also revealed the project's construction schedule – and it is sooner than you’d think. After the second consultation in July is finalised, along with planning consent granted from Camden Council in September this year, construction will begin in 2029, with the building set to open in 2033.

The future of the BT Tower in London

The American hotel chain MCR is behind the transformation of the former telecommunications tower, having acquired the building for a cool £270 million from the BT Group in 2024.

The proposal includes a restoration of the former 1930s telephone exchange, the Howland building, into hotel rooms. Plans also show the addition of a second staircase and four rooms positioned around the original concrete core of the tower, using this main body as the hotel's framework.

Additionally, the 1960s façade of the main ground-floor building will be renovated to accommodate shop fronts and other retail uses. Although there is no mention of bringing back the revolving restaurant, the public will have access to a revolving observation deck at the top of the tower.

There will also be a chance to swim at the tower, with plans for a rooftop swimming pool inspired by MCR's (and Wallpaper* Travel Guide favourite) TWA Hotel in New York. While it is available to hotel guests, the public will also be able to book a slot to use the heated, infinity-edge pool.

In consultation documents, Orms stated: ‘While maintaining the overall structure, we will remove unsightly modern additions to the 1960s exterior on the ground floor. We will then introduce retail on the ground floor and add a modest pavilion structure on the roof.’

The final part of Orms’ plan is to create a public square accessible from Howland Street and Maple Street. However, it remains uncertain what will be in store within levels 24 to 30.

Since the tower's completion in 1964, the building has undergone many iterations. Originally commissioned by the General Post Office to provide telecoms, it also housed a revolving restaurant, which closed in 1971 after a bomb exploded.

After its renaming to the British Telecom Tower in the early 1980s, the tower was closed to the public altogether from 1981. Since then, BT Tower has seen a 360-degree lighting display installed, in the early 2000s, but Orms’ plans for the tower are the most expansive to date.

You can read more about the consultation here

You may have heard of Cuban-born American artist Ana Mendieta (1948-1985), but how much do you know about her art? Her multidisciplinary practice encompassed sculpture, film, performance, photography, painting and drawing, but she is best known for her ‘silueta’, or ‘earth-body', works, in which she outlined her body in nature.

More than 120 of Mendieta’s works are now on view in a new retrospective at Tate Modern in London (15 July 2026 – 17 January 2027), including a nude woman’s form in a tomb covered with sprigs of small white flowers, the flaming form of a body on a sandy landscape, and the shape of a body in a shoreline, being slowly eroded by the tide. The exhibition takes us through Mendieta’s practice, from her teenage years up until around 1984, exploring her whole body of work.

'Tate's involvement with Ana Mendieta really started in the 2000s; we acquired works as early as 2009, so this is not really something new for Tate. But in 2020, when I joined [the gallery] to be in charge of moving image, the first acquisition I worked on with my colleague Mike Wellen, who is the co-curator of this show, was an acquisition of six films by Mendieta, so our representation of the artist really grew tremendously from 2020,’ explains the exhibition’s co-curator Valentine Umansky.

Tate has the largest holding of any museum of Mendieta’s films and this is the biggest-ever UK exhibition of the artist’s work. Many of the works on display have never been shown in the country before.

Mendieta was exiled from Cuba, where she had had an affluent childhood (until her father became a political prisoner), to the United States at the age of 12; there, she lived in foster care with her sister. She went on to study art at the University of Iowa, gaining her MA in 1972, and even in the very early stages of her career she experimented and pushed boundaries by working with themes of violence, gender and ecology. In creating and recording ephemeral works, she explored core themes of death, energy, gender, nature, transformation and spirituality, the last through references to the religion Santeria.

In an early work, Moffitt Building Piece, 1973, she staged the aftermath of an accident on a public pavement and recorded the public’s reaction to it in a series of photographs. This is shown in the exhibition alongside a film work that shows the artist painting the words ‘She Got Love’ in red on a white wooden door. Her work, although it sits in the canon of its time, today feels urgent and radical, partly due to Mendieta’s great gift for image-making and the fact that her subject matter resonates in the current moment.

‘One thing that might be most important is that our awareness of ecology has fundamentally shifted [since Mendieta’s time] and so I had a feeling that younger audiences [and others] in the UK would be very sensitive to some of the topics raised in her works that maybe were not read in this way in the 1970s or 1980s – particularly, her desire and drive to blend [with] or dissolve in nature, and also her care for what we would now call a sustainable mindset,’ Umansky explains.

This is echoed in the restaging of a number of ephemeral works by Mendieta, realised for the exhibition in collaboration with her niece and the head of her estate, Raquel Cecilia Mendieta.

Where no instructions were left for realising these works, Raquel collaborated with the curators at Tate to recreate them as closely as possible in a gallery setting, in some cases for the first time since they were conceived.

Yemaya Gifts, 1982, was originally created for Museo Barrio, an important place for Latin American and Caribbean artists; it has been recreated in sand and mushroom corals for the first time for the Tate Modern exhibition.

For a work in the Untitled: Silueta, 1978, series, a part of the Old Westbury forest at New York College has been recreated using found timber and found and foraged soil, moss and stones.

‘We worked very closely with Raquel Cecilia Mendieta,’ Umansky adds. ‘She had done a series of restagings, but this one [from the Untitled: Silueta, 1978, series] was the first [restaging of that particular work], so it's always an experiment.’

These restagings act as an essential bridge between the documentation film and photography and what must have been the very powerful immediacy of Mendieta’s performances. They also speak to the theme of rebirth that recurs throughout her work.

Much of Mendieta’s work was essentially ephemeral, although very well documented. The exhibition includes sections that reference symbolic locations important to the artist’s work, such as The Grove and The River, while a section called The Repertoire looks at repeated patterns, materials and motifs in her work.

Previous discussion of Mendieta has often centred on the circumstances of her death in 1985 (her husband, artist Carl Andre, was charged then acquitted of her murder after she plummeted from his apartment), but here, we get a deep dive into her legacy as an artist and the impact of her work.

Among the films we see in the exhibition is Sweating Blood, 1973, and Blood Feathers, 1974, where Mendieta covered herself with blood and feathers, transforming herself into a kind of bird, and Grass Breathing, 1974, where she created a kind of pulsing grassy site. There is also the series she made with writer and poet Morty Sklar, Untitled (Facial Hair Transplants), 1972, where she took his facial hair to create a beard on herself. Alongside are works that sit gently in nature, to be later washed away, or where the artist blended her body with the landscape. She was experimenting with gender, identity, physical presence, a love of natural spaces and the ambiguities therein.

There are also many drawings and paintings, previously unseen in London, and a work titled Parachute, made with children that Mendieta taught while working as a primary school teacher.

This show goes some way to replacing myth about Mendieta with fact. It also places the artist alongside the likes of Tracey Emin and Frida Kahlo (also the subjects of Tate Modern exhibitions this summer, Emin until 30 August, Kahlo until 3 January 2027), who have similarly been the focus of much mythmaking, and demonstrates that however much we might know about Mendieta’s life, there is more to learn from her art.

Umansky reflects that the show forms ‘part of the work that the artist’s estate has been doing very meticulously over the last ten years to correct some of the factual errors that were written around [her] work. This is a process that allows for better definition of the works so that they're seen as [if] brand new and in the best possible light.’

‘Ana Mendieta’ at Tate Modern, London, 15 July 2026 to 17 January 2027, tate.org.uk